Owosso grew along the Shiawassee River, whose course was formed when the last glaciers retreated north thousands of years ago and whose Chippewa name means “straight-ahead.” Among the first white settlers was French fur trapper Henry Bolieu, who came by canoe from Saginaw in 1815, and in 1833 A. L. and B. O. Williams began buying land for the settlement that became Owosso, recruiting settlers from New York State and building a millrace along present-day Water Street to power a large grist mill. The city’s name came from Chief Wasso of the Chippewa tribe, and local legend connected his name to the death of his mother, Princess Natomo, and the grief of his father, Bukadawin. Judge Elias Comstock built the first permanent house in 1836, Dr. John Barnes became the first physician in 1842 and aided runaway slaves on the Underground Railroad, and the Gould brothers helped shape the community through law, banking, trade, surveying, rail building, and business. The arrival of the railroad in 1856 brought rapid growth, replacing stagecoach service from Pontiac, attracting skilled workers, and helping the city incorporate in 1859 with 1,000 residents after earlier names including Big Rapids, Wasso, and Owasso. With abundant Michigan timber carried by rail, industries such as Woodard Furniture, Owosso Casket, Estey’s Furniture Factory, and Robbins Table Company made the city a major manufacturing center by the 1870s for furniture, carriages, merry-go-rounds, and other wood products, followed later by iron and steel expansion, the Owosso Manufacturing Company founded by Alvin Bentley I in 1885, the Owosso Sugar Company in 1903, and Renown Stove Company’s move to the city in 1908. Owosso’s prosperity also drew artists and artisans whose work shaped notable homes and commercial buildings, leaving one of the Midwest’s finest collections of nineteenth-century architecture. People associated with Owosso included impressionist painter Frederick Carl Frieseke, author and conservation advocate James Oliver Curwood, Governor Thomas E. Dewey, industrialist George W. Hoddy, educators and public figures such as Rev. John Cavanaugh, Dr. John Perkins, Alfred Day Hershey, Geraldine Mahaney, Brad Van Pelt, John Bagley, Alvin M. Bentley III, Felix Schlag, and Cora Phillips Taylor. Owosso’s residential and downtown districts later gained national historic recognition, with multiple historic districts and individual buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places.