1843 Railroad reaches Hillsdale



Reading Bank late 1800's



The "New"Reading Feed Mill 1912

    The first English-speaking white settler in what later would become the city of Hillsdale was Jeremiah Arnold, of De Peyster, New York, who arrived in 1834, pitched a tent and then built a log cabin on the site of the present day fairgrounds. In that same year, Chauncey Ferris and John Cook opened a well-stocked store in Jonesville. In 1835, the Jonesville Presbyterian Church was constructed, the first church building in the county. In 1839, the first newspaper, the Hillsdale County Gazette, was published on April 13, by James K. Kinman, an attorney and one of the early pioneers who credited Baw Beese for saving the lives of his sick family during a severe winter. The Whig-Standard, forerunner of The Hillsdale Daily News, did not appear in print until 1846. As an attorney, Kinman later gained fame as the defense council for the notorious international counterfitter, horse thief and outlaw Sile Doty, who was convicted in 1852 in the Hillsdale Circuit court and incarcerated throughout the Civil War in Jackson State Prison.

    After the railroad arrived to the county a line was sent to Reading and Montgomery.  Reading became a booming town with manufacturing -furniture, household necessities, buffalo tanning, folding chairs, etc.  proprietors built fancy homes as pictured in late 1800's.

    In 1843, the railroad reached Hillsdale from Adrian and the first steam engine of the Erie and Kalamazoo line rolled into the small village. For ten years thereafter, Hillsdale became the "jumping off place" for the wild west until the railroad was continued through to Coldwater and Chicago in 1853. Hillsdale was itself a little wild during that period as rogues and rascals took the trains to the last stop on the line. From that time until the 1950s Hillsdale was known as a railroad center, with as many as 26 passenger trains a day going in and out of the city.