The Nankin Township Historical Society

No matter how obscure these defunct towns are there is always seemingly one item in existence. Here's another for Catville. A letter to a Mrs. Orange Brown (could be Braun) at Catville from Hartland, Michigan, April 21, 1863. I won't harp upon Catville much longer but here's the Wikipedia synopsis of the town whose name has an interesting story: "New Boston was first settled in 1827 and was originally called 'Catville' after the initials of the proprietor, C. A. Trowbridge. It received a post office with that name in 1860. On March 20, 1868, it was renamed New Boston, after Boston, Massachusetts."

My happiness of finding an old defunct hamlet called Catville was short-lived as the town eventually evolved into New Boston. Which is sad but it also led me to this section of a longer article called History of Detroit's Real Estate that was written concerning a paper by C. M. Burton on just that topic read before the Detroit Real Estate Board in early 1900. Detroit Free Press , April 8, 1900 Mentioned are several defunct villages, name changes and neighborhoods. Included are Belgrade (bet. Delray & the Rouge Bridge), Cassandra (a mile & a half west of Woodward & the 10,000 acre tract [didn't this get mentioned recently?]), Mount Pleasant (sec. 31 within the town of Romulus), Truaxton or Truago (which became Trenton), Vreelandt (Flat Rock), Michigan City (Rawsonville), Grand Port (Ecorse) and Catville (New Boston). ( enlarge )