- Coordinates
- 45.5971° N, 85.5374° WGoogle Maps: Township of GalileeDownload KML
- Eras
- Strang era
- Concepts
- governancetoponymydemographyStrang era
- Within
- Beaver Island
- Media
- Beaver Island History Map, 1978 revision
Summary
The Township of Galilee was a short-lived civil township on the southern part of Beaver Island. It was created in 1855, during the period of Strang’s political influence and the formation of Manitou County, and was vacated in 1897, when its territory returned to Township of Peaine. Its first township meeting was to be held at the school in Galilee. The act that created it divided Manitou County into four townships: Peaine and Galilee on the Beaver group, Patmos on the Fox Islands, and Manitou on the Manitou Islands.
History
Quaife’s account of Emmet County identifies Peaine and Galilee as the two townships comprising the Beaver Islands in the mid-1850s.1 A February 2026 Northern Islander chronology, drawing on Joan C. Vyse’s 2002 local research, supplies the more precise administrative sequence: Galilee Township was created in 1855, its first meeting was assigned to the school in Galilee, and the township was vacated in 1897.2
Quaife’s pairing is a statement about the Beaver Islands and not about Manitou County. His footnote reads: “Emmet County contained three townships; two, Peaine and Galilee, comprised the Beaver Islands; Charlevoix Township was the mainland portion of the county.”1
The act of 12 February 1855 that organized Manitou County divided it into four townships, not two. Sections 3 and 4 made Peaine and Galilee out of the Beaver group; section 5 organized the North and South Fox Islands as Patmos, with its first township meeting at the district school house on South Fox; and section 6 organized the North and South Manitou Islands as Manitou, meeting at Pickard and Brother’s store house on North Manitou.3 Peaine and Galilee were the county’s two Beaver Island townships, and the county had two more beyond them.
The 1978 Beaver Island History Map instead labels the area “Galilee Township until 1896.” Because the map supplies no citation and the independent chronology places the vacation in 1897, this article retains 1897 and records the map’s one-year disagreement as a source-critical lead.
The name therefore outlasted the Kingdom of Saint James by decades, but not as a surviving civil unit. Do not project the modern two-township arrangement of Peaine and Saint James backward across the 1855-1897 interval without accounting for Galilee.
Administrative relationships
Galilee was not a third island or a synonym for the whole archipelago. It was a civil township, distinct from the village of Galilee and from the original 1847 Township of Peaine, and one of four townships in Manitou County. Galilee was organized earlier than the county that later contained it. Its enabling act is section 6 of Act No. 18 of 1853, approved 29 January 1853, which set it off from Peaine and ordered its first meeting at the store occupied by Ludlow Hill; the same act placed Peaine in the county of Emmet. Section 4 of the 12 February 1855 Manitou County act re-enacted it on the same line. Both describe the territory by survey township and range rather than by boundary line; no plat or surveyed description has been located.
Open questions
- The enabling act is held — section 6 of Act No. 18 of 1853, with section 4 of the 1855 Manitou County act re-enacting it — but its survey-township description has not been reduced to a mapped boundary, and the first officeholders have not been located.
- Quaife’s footnote is attached to a citation of the Northern Islander of 2 November 1854, three months before the Manitou County act, and it describes Emmet County. Whether Galilee already existed as an Emmet County township before February 1855, or Quaife was reading the arrangement the act produced back onto 1854, is unresolved here.
- The precise date and legal form of the 1897 vacation and transfer to Peaine remain to be checked against county or state records.
- No GNIS feature or modern boundary geometry for the historical township is held. The coordinate is only an approximate reference to Galilee village, the documented first-meeting location, not a modern coordinate for the historical township itself.
See also
Footnotes
-
Quaife, The Kingdom of Saint James (1930), p. 159, footnote to a census figure for Charlevoix Township. Printed folio confirmed from the running header of the page image. ↩ ↩2
-
Welke, “A Short History of Governance on the Beaver Island Archipelago”, Northern Islander, February 2026, pp. 4-5. ↩
-
“An Act to Organize the County of Manitue,” sections 3 to 6, printed in Strang’s Northern Islander (Saint James, Beaver Island), 31 May 1855, vol. V, no. 1, whole no. 68, on the issue’s fourth page. Approved 12 February 1855; read from the page image. The 1874 Michigan Historical Collections reprint of the act, pp. 259-260, carries sections 1, 2, 7 and 8 only and is silent on the townships. ↩
Sources
- Described in this archive: The Kingdom of Saint James, Quaife, 1930.Quaife identifies Peaine and Galilee as the two townships comprising the Beaver Islands within Emmet County in the Strang period. Page image checked at printed p. 159: the statement is a footnote attached to a citation of the Northern Islander of 2 November 1854, and it counts Emmet County's townships, not Manitou County's.
- Modern secondary history, explicitly summarising local historian Joan C. Vyse's 2002 research: Galilee Township was created on the southern part of Beaver Island in 1855, its first meeting was to be held at the school in Galilee, and it was vacated in 1897 with the territory returned to Peaine Township. It does not supply a mappable boundary or coordinate geometry for the historical township.
- *Northern Islander*, February 2026, township-history article in the Beaver Island Historical Society community newspaper.Held OCR counterpart of the same issue; retained as a separate local transcription path because the newspaper corpus and Internet Archive book export are distinct source records. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
- Galilee settlement record, Beaver Island History KB, retrieved 2026-08-06.The coordinate reuses the related Galilee settlement record's approximate village anchor because the historical account places the township's first meeting at the school in Galilee. It is not a township boundary or centroid. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.kb · articles · places · galilee
- The map supplies an uncited 1896 ending year. The independent local-government chronology above says 1897, so the map label is preserved as a disagreement rather than used to change the article chronology.
- Described in this archive: Northern Islander, 1850–1856.The full text of the 12 February 1855 organization act. Section 4 organizes the southern part of Beaver Island as the township of Galilee, with its first meeting at the school house at Galilee; sections 3, 5 and 6 organize Peaine, Patmos and Manitou. Read from the page image of the issue's fourth page as well as from the transcription. The 1855 session-law volume prints all eight sections as well; its index lists 'Patmos, township of, organized ... 198'.
Added 31 July 2026 · revised 20 August 2026. Recent changes
Cite this article
Beaver Island Archive, “Township of Galilee”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/places/township-of-galilee/, accessed [date], citing Milo M. Quaife, *The Kingdom of Saint James: A Narrative of the Mormons* (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1930), p. 159 and note. (and 5 further sources listed on the page).
Last revised 2026-08-20. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.
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