Residents of Deerfield in Lenawee County gathered for a semi-centennial celebration marking fifty years since the first permanent Euro-American settlement of the community. The occasion commemorated the arrival of William Kedzie and his family in 1826, when southeastern Michigan remained part of Michigan Territory. Deerfield’s observance was more than a local anniversary. It documented the transformation of a small pioneer settlement along the River Raisin into an established agricultural community during a half-century in which Michigan itself passed from territorial frontier to industrializing state.
William Kedzie, a Scottish immigrant who had come to the United States in the 1790s, made the first public-land entry associated with the future Deerfield area in 1824. He moved his family from New York to the property in 1826. The settlement initially became known as Kedzie’s Grove. Kedzie assumed several important civic responsibilities during the community’s earliest period. He served as the first supervisor of the larger Blissfield jurisdiction, became the first postmaster at Kedzie’s Grove, assisted with the organization of Lenawee County, and received an appointment as an associate county judge in 1827. His death on August 5, 1828, was recorded as the first death and burial among the settlers of what became Deerfield Township.
Settlement expanded quickly after the Kedzies arrived. The Clark family, headed by Daniel H. Clark, arrived in 1827, followed by additional families during the late 1820s and 1830s. Their circumstances reflected the physical isolation of early southeastern Michigan settlements. Roads were scarce, forests were extensive, and settlers initially depended upon Monroe for essential services. Historical accounts record journeys to Monroe for milling, supplies, medical assistance, blacksmithing, and other necessities. Mail initially traveled by horseback from Monroe through Deerfield and Blissfield. Deerfield’s first schoolhouse, a log structure, was erected in 1829, with Caroline Amelia Bixby of Adrian identified as its first teacher.
The community gradually developed around the River Raisin. Sawmilling became an important local activity as settlers cleared heavily timbered land for farms. Ephraim Hall, who arrived in Lenawee County in 1836, became associated with an early dam and sawmill. That same year, residents replaced the name Kedzie’s Grove with Deerfield. Historical accounts attribute the choice partly to the abundance of deer in the area and partly to Hall’s association with relatives in Deerfield, Massachusetts. The new name became permanent.
The landscape surrounding Deerfield also changed substantially during the fifty years commemorated in 1876. Forested acreage gave way to cultivated farms producing wheat, oats, and other crops. Waterways that had served as natural geographic features became sources of power and transportation corridors. Local institutions followed settlement: schools, churches, mills, businesses, postal service, and transportation connections established a permanent community where scattered cabins had existed in the 1820s.
Political organization followed this economic development. For decades the area remained part of Blissfield Township. Deerfield Township became a separate civil township on March 13, 1867. Additional territory was added from Ridgeway Township in 1869. The village of Deerfield was incorporated in 1872, only four years before the semi-centennial celebration. By the anniversary year, Deerfield therefore possessed both a fifty-year settlement history and recently established municipal institutions.
The timing of the August 25 celebration was especially notable because 1876 was also the centennial year of the United States. Communities throughout the nation used the anniversary of American independence to collect pioneer reminiscences, honor surviving settlers, and record local history. Deerfield’s commemoration became part of this larger historical preservation movement. Its importance survives because the proceedings were subsequently preserved by the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society. They appeared under the title “Semi-Centennial Celebration at Deerfield, Lenawee County, Aug. 25, 1876” in the Michigan Historical Collections. The published record occupies several pages, giving later historians direct evidence that Deerfield consciously documented its pioneer generation.
The celebration also preserved the significance of families whose influence extended beyond Lenawee County. William Kedzie’s son Robert Clark Kedzie, who had come to Michigan with his family as a three-year-old child in 1826, later became professor of chemistry at Michigan Agricultural College. Robert Kedzie became an important Michigan scientist and public-health advocate, serving on the State Board of Health and conducting influential research into hazards including arsenical wallpaper. His career linked the small frontier settlement at Deerfield with the development of Michigan’s major public institutions.
The August 25, 1876, semi-centennial therefore marks an important point in Deerfield history. Within fifty years, Kedzie’s Grove had become an incorporated Michigan village surrounded by productive farms, connected by transportation and postal networks, and supported by established civic institutions. More important for historians, Deerfield’s residents recorded that transition while members of the pioneer generation could still recount it. Their celebration preserved a local record of how one Lenawee County community developed during Michigan’s formative nineteenth-century decades.
References / More Knowledge:
Bonner, Richard Illenden. Memoirs of Lenawee County, Michigan: From the Earliest Historical Times Down to the Present. Madison, WI: Western Historical Association, 1909.
https://archive.org/search?query=%22Memoirs+of+Lenawee+County%22
Historical Society of Michigan. “Who Was Robert Kedzie?” Michigan History Magazine, March/April 2026.
https://hsmichigan.org/sites/default/files/2026-03/PUB-MHM-Sample%20Story%20-%20MarApr26.pdf
Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society. Michigan Historical Collections, Vol. 17. Lansing: Robert Smith & Co., 1892. “Semi-Centennial Celebration at Deerfield, Lenawee County, Aug. 25, 1876,” pp. 528–537.
https://books.google.com/books?id=DqxNAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA528
Michigan State University Archives and Historical Collections. “Kedzie Family Papers, UA.28.6.”
https://archive.lib.msu.edu/uahc/FindingAids/ua28-6.pdf
Michigan State University. “A Dozen Milestones of MSU’s Sesquicentennial.” Spartan Magazine.
https://spartan.msu.edu/spartan-story-hub/news/2005/01/feature-a-dozen-milestones-of-msus-sesquincentennial
Michigan State Historical Society. Early History of Michigan, with Biographies of State Officers, Members of Congress, Judges and Legislators. Lansing: Thorp & Godfrey, 1888.
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/micounty/BAD6021.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext
National Park Service. Blissfield Downtown Historic District, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form.
https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/883e80ab-4761-40bd-aa6e-57daeee8cbde/