Township of Saint James

Civil townshipGNIS 1627029

Coordinates

45.7884° N, 85.5868° WGoogle Maps: Township of Saint JamesDownload KML

Eras

Strang eraModern era

Concepts

toponymyStrang eragovernancedemographysettlement

Within

Beaver Island · Beaver Island archipelago

Media

1940 census enumeration district descriptions, Charlevoix County: ED 15-23, 15-24, 15-25

Summary

The Township of Saint James is one of two civil townships covering Beaver Island — together with Township of Peaine, the two cover the whole island and no mainland territory. It takes its name from the harbor village of Saint James, the island’s principal settlement and, under James Jesse Strang’s Latter Day Saint settlement (1847–1856; kingdom from 1850), the seat of his self-organized county government.

History

The whole archipelago was first organized as a single civil township, Peaine, in 1847.¹ The Township of Saint James represents a later division from that original unit. An official Peaine Township historical summary dates its formation to 13 December 1899, by the Charlevoix County Board of Supervisors, following a petition; the 1978 Historical Map prints “St. James Twp., 1900-”, which reads as that action rounded to the first full year or the first separate federal census rather than as a competing date.

That 1899 date is one step removed from the primary record. The held summary cites the county proceedings at pages 749-750, and those pages have not been obtained and read here. Its relationship to the 1897 vacation of Galilee Township is also unestablished.

One caution follows from the sequence: census material headed “St. James” before 1900 must not be read automatically as this civil township. It can refer to the harbor settlement or to an enumeration label, and the township did not exist under that name until the county acted. Its name derives directly from the harbor village: per a settler’s-daughter memoir, “the county seat and post office was at the harbor, named in honor of the King ‘Saint James’” — James Jesse Strang, who took the title King James at his 1850 coronation.²

The township’s population was 307 in 2000, rose to 365 in 2010, then fell to 259 in 2020.³ Earlier counts, back to 120 in 1900, are set out in the demography survey. The 2023 American Community Survey 5-year estimate reports a higher total population (374) alongside 263 of 436 housing units recorded as vacant and a median age of 59.5. Read those as a rolling estimate with wide margins for a population this small, not as a literal count comparable to the decennial census.

The forum archive also preserves a cluster of 2021 staffing and succession notices: the township sought a supervisor, a trustee, and a planning and administrative assistant. Those notices document recruitment and intended appointment processes, not the eventual officeholders, hires, or completed planning work.

Geography

Saint James Township is the smaller of the two townships on land and by far the larger in reach. Measured from the State of Michigan’s minor-civil-divisions layer, it covers 21.0 square miles (13,432 acres) against Peaine’s 53.6 square miles (34,297 acres) — but where Peaine lies wholly within Beaver Island, Saint James is a multi-part boundary spanning roughly 43 km of longitude, from 85°50′W to 85°18′W.

It takes in the harbor and the northern part of Beaver Island and the whole of the outer archipelago. Thirteen named islands fall within it:

That distinction matters for reading almost any township record. A Saint James assessment roll, school district, or road list may concern ground a boat-ride away from the harbor, and the surveys of Hat, Shoe, Trout and Whiskey islands sit in the same township’s paperwork as the village waterfront.

On the coordinate. This article previously gave the township’s position as “the northern portion of Beaver Island, per its GNIS coordinate centroid (45.788°N, 85.587°W).” That point is in open water — 3.8 km from Beaver Island and 3.2 km from Whiskey Island — and it does not lie inside the township’s own polygon in the State layer. It is a GNIS representative point for a civil division, which is a filing convenience, not a location, and it cannot be evidence for what the township covers. The polygon’s measured centroid is 45.7666°N, 85.5381°W. Corrected 8 August 2026.

Names

No former or alternate name is recorded for the township in sources held; its name has been stable since its (undated) separation from the original Township of Peaine.

Significance

The township contains Saint James harbor, and with it the island’s seat of government and its principal point of contact with the mainland: the post office, the Life-Saving Service station in 1902 (see Saint James), and, today, the ferry and airline services.

Added 28 July 2026 · revised 7 August 2026. Recent changes