Heritage through our Ancestors

Askins and DeWildt Families

Local History

While surveying a road through here in 1861, Captain Rudolph Papst made camp at an old hunter's cabin, finding in it a much-used axe.  At the suggestion of Lt. G. W. Pack, Captain Papst used the name Bad Axe Camp in his Minutes of Survey and later on his county map.

Given a post office named Bad Axe on November 27, 1870, with Charles E. Brown as its first postmaster.  On October 15, 1872, the county supervisors voted to make the place the county seat, and the next year they planned and platted the village and moved to it the county seat from Port Austin.  Incorporated as a village in 1885, with Septimus Irwin, the first settler, as president.  Incorporated as a city in 1905.  The legislature changed its name to Huron 1909, but the townspeople voted back its original name.

Informational excerpts from Michigan Place Names, by Walter Romig, L.H.D.

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