In 1800, the first settler Henry Snow came to this location which was original called Snow's Landing. In 1825, Amariah Rawson and his family arrived at the village.The community plat, as Michigan City by Amariah Rawson and two others, was filed on January 7, 1836. After a group of neighbors petitioned the State Legislature asking that the name be changed to Rawsonville, on March 22, 1839, the act formally changing the name to Rawsonville was passed.[4] On November 14, 1838, The Van Buren post office was moved to Rawsonville and assumed that name.[2]
By the Civil War era, the village was doing well with grist mill, saw mill, a stove factory, and a wagon maker. With the building of the railroad, the community was bypassed hurting the industries there.[5]
On October 25, 1895, the post office was closed. It reopened on November 20, 1895, only to close again on February 28, 1902.[2] By 1900, there were few residents. In 1925, the Detroit Edison company began constructing the French Landing hydroelectric dam on the Huron River and parts of the land around the community became submerged in the new Belleville Lake. There is a historical marker in front of the McDonald's on Rawsonville Road and across from Grove Road mentioning this, although erroneously stating "Most of the town" was under the lake. The modern community of Rawsonville still exists on land west of the original settlement, and with a commercial district on most of the original settlement's land, with only small portions of the community now being under Belleville lake.[5]
^Horste1 Wilson2, Cathy S.1 Diane F.2 (1980). Water Under the Bridge; A History of Van Buren Township; Second Edition. Belleville, Michigan: Van Buren Township Bicentenniall Commission. pp. 169, 171.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
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