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Inquiries come from all over the country to the Edwardsburg Museum thanks to the Internet. This is a new age and anything you want to know just takes a few key strokes on a computer. This request came from Cody Edwards in Tonganoxie, Kansas. This was a request about Ezra Beardsley and Thomas Edwards and created a need to investigate the Beardsley and the Edwards. Here is the story.Jo-Ann Boepple: Give thanks to the men who gave Edwardsburg an identity
Published 3:24pm Thursday, November 19, 2009You can’t write about or talk about Edwardsburg without starting with the Beardsleys and the Edwards.
Edwardsburg is founded on the Beardsley Prairie, named so by Ezra Beardsley.
Edwardsburg is credited as being the point from which all settlers radiated into adjacent areas. It was known as the “Embryo City.” Ezra Beardsley chose it as the place to settle and raise his family. He selected a place on the shores of Pleasant Lake, cultivated the land and erected a small cabin then returned to Butler County, Ohio.
In the spring of 1826 he returned with his wife and daughters and began his life as a pioneer. He was the sole white man in the area until the spring of 1827 when four young men, George and Sylvester Meacham, George Crawford and Chester Sage arrived. They also erected a cabin on the shores of Pleasant Lake. It is said that a building on the Beardsley property was used as a jail.
Thomas Edwards arrived in 1828 and opened a general store in a pole shanty near the Old Sauk Trail believed to be at the intersection of Lake and Hamilton Streets.
Thomas Edwards married Lovica Beardsley, a daughter of Ezra Beardsley in the winter of 1828-29. In 1830 George Crawford married Ann Beardsley, another daughter of Ezra and they moved to Elkhart. Ezra Beardsley’s wife had a daughter, Hannah Neblick and she married Sylvester Meacham.
In 1831 Ezra Beardsley kept a tavern, a place for lodging emigrants as “land lookers” were passing through the country. The East -West Route ran right through Beardsley territory and the travelers stopped at the little cluster of cabins for food and shelter.
Ezra Beardsley made the first land entries in 1829 of sections five, six, and seven of Ontwa Township. Organized in the spring of 1829, the township was comprised at that time of nearly half of Cass County.
The first election was held at the house of Ezra Beardsley in the spring of 1830. Beardsley was elected Supervisor, Thomas H. Edwards was selected as Clerk, Sylvester Meacham, Othni Beardsley and John Bogart were Commissioner of Highways, John Baldwin, Othni Beardsley and George Meacham as Assessors.
Ezra Beardsley left the area in 1833 and headed west but he left behind many Beardsley descendants. An Indian girl in the employ of Thomas Edwards was named Ontwa, thus the name for the township.
Alexander Hamilton Edwards purchased a parcel of land from Beardsley and platted 44 lots, which he recorded as the Village of Edwardsburgh, which was surveyed by George Crawford.
At this time of giving thanks, we can thank these men who gave this place a name and an identity.
