Pioneer history of Ingham County, compiled and arranged by Mrs. Franc L. Adams, secretary of the Ingham County pioneer and historical society.

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PIONEER HISTORY OF INGHIAM COUNTY

turnpike, and that and the Detroit, Lansing and Lake Michigan
Railroad are the principal routes of travel through the town.
The State Agricultural College, located on section 18, has a
farm of 676 acres, valued at $47,320; buildings for instruction
valued at $27,800; farm buildings valued at $12,300; dormitories and dwellings valued at $76,400; and other property valued
at $249,075. It gives instruction to some two hundred students.
There are nine school districts with commodious school houses;
one graded school at Okemos. The number of children between
the ages of five and twenty years in the township is 378.
The places of worship, all in Okemos, are one Baptist, one
Presbyterian and one Methodist Episcopal church.
The business establishments comprise one variety store, including hardware, one dry goods store, one grocery, one millinery
shop, two taverns, one custom and flouring mill, run by water
power, two steam saw mills, two blacksmith shops, one wagon
shop and two shoe shops.
Our professionals are two physicians and one clergyman.
Population in 1874 is 1,436. Number of bushels of wheat raised
in 1873, 30,485.
RED BRIDGE POSTOFFICE-MERIDIAN.
You might search the postoffice directory of Ingham county in
vain to find this postoffice. It is a thing of the past; a relic of
pioneer days before the Pere Marquette Railroad was built.
Few of the old pioneers of Meridian Township are left to tell you
anything about it. The stirring scenes of everyday life have
blotted out of their minds any recollections which the younger
generations may have had of it.
I will try in this article to give my recollections of it and the
patrons it served. Those old rural post offices in pioneer days
were social centers, a meeting place where neighbors gathered to
discuss the weather, crops, social events and the more serious
questions of politics and religion.
Where was this post office located? Going east on the plank
road ten miles from Lansing you passed through toll gate number
three. A few rods east of the gate was a long one-story and a half
white house, on the south side of the road. This was the home
of the Mullett family, and here was also the Red Bridge postoffice.