Dansville, Almost Our State Capitol: A Brief Backstory

Before we get to a brief backstory on Dansville, a little about Ingham County...

Ingham County (and Township were named after Samuel D. Ingham, who spent his life in Pennsylvania and New Jersey....but for some reason, Michiganders in the 1800s thought enough of him to name a whole county after him.

Ingham belonged to the House of Representatives and Congress, was Secretary of the Commonwealth and Secretary of the Treasury. He quit politics in 1830, stuck to being a businessman, and passed away in 1860 at age 81.

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In the early 1840s, Samuel Crossman was the first white settler in the area of Ingham Township which would later become Dansville. In 1847, he opened up a general store, the very first business in town.

Crossman sold his store to his son Daniel, who platted the town in 1857. It has been speculated that he had the intention of making Dansville the nerve-center of the township, and possibly the whole county.

It was soon decided to make Dansville the capitol of Michigan, but fires kept breaking out, repeatedly burning the town. The town just couldn't keep up with the constant repairs, and it was finally, and disappointingly, decided that being the Capitol City wouldn’t work in Dansville.

The town was named 'Dansville' after Daniel Crossman, incorporated in 1867.

Dansville became a very popular stagecoach stop, a perfect break between Dexter and Mason. At one prosperous time, Dansville had a blacksmith, carpenter, carriage shops, churches, cooper shop, doctors' offices, general store, grist mill, hotel, lumber yard, mill yard, post office, sawmill, schools, several other shops & stores, and taverns.

Stagecoach travelers raved about the Dansville shopping experience, bringing their friends and family to check it out. But in 1870, the Jackson, Lansing and Saginaw railroad unfortunately bypassed Dansville and went straight south - from Lansing through Mason to Jackson. That was it for stagecoaches – without the stagecoach travel, business and trade were taken away from Dansville. Townfolk weren’t about to pack it in, so they focused on working the farmland, of which that income saved the village.

Today, Dansville still perseveres despite fires, tragedies, and troubles over the past 150+ years.