Was There Ever a Town Named “Rolfe” in Ingham County? Here’s the Answer
Have you ever taken the Barnes Road exit off 127 and headed west toward Aurelius? If so, did you ever notice a small cemetery not far from the highway?
This little cemetery with just a few graves is called Rolfe Cemetery.
Was there ever a town in the area called ‘Rolfe’?
There’s also a Rolfe Road between Barnes Road and Mason which could lead one to believe there was once a community by that name.
There was not a village or town, but there was a place listed as the ‘Rolf Settlement’ (with no E”). In 1836, the area was settled by the Rolf brothers: Benjamin, Ephraim, Hazen, Ira, Manessah, and Nathan. Old atlases do indeed show land owned by the Rolfes (now with the extra “E” added to their name).
The following year – 1837 – the first of the Rolfs passed away: 18-year-old Fanny Rolf. A cemetery was created on a patch of land near the settlement and dubbed ‘Rolfe (with the “E”) Cemetery, with Fanny as the first burial. Over time, two of the original Rolf brothers were buried there: Benjamin (1850) and Ephraim (1860). In that small cemetery lie the remains of seventeen Rolfes, the last being 90-year-old Wesley Rolfe, who passed in 1942.
Many other Rolfes were buried elsewhere: in Aurelius, Dansville, Lansing, Leslie, and Mason – approximately 75 in all.
The Rolfs came from New York and Vermont, settling in the southwestern part of Aurelius Township. They settled in the middle of a dense forest and built a log house. They traveled to Kalamazoo and paid $100 for eighty acres; not long afterward, they opened a saw/grist mill in Jackson. The first road to reach Mason from Aurelius Township was cut by the Rolfs in 1837.
Benjamin’s son, Alvin, recorded some remembrances in 1880: “The first lumber we got in Jackson, for a coffin for a sister of mine. She died April 7, 1837, and I think was the first person who died in the town.” She was the above-mentioned Fanny Rolfe.
Alvin also wrote the following words, which still ring true to this day: "When men complain of hard times and find fault with our government and the currency, which is the best we ever had, I want to tell them they do not know anything about hard times. If they had to pay ten bushels of wheat for one axe; twenty-five dollars for a barrel of flour; forty dollars for a barrel of pork; two dollars for oats; twenty-two cents per pound for fresh pork; fifty cents per pound for butter; and other things in proportion, and their money would not keep over-night, then they would have reason to complain."
Next time you head west on Barnes Road, stop and pay your respects to the Rolfes at the Rolfe Cemetery.