Samuel W. Dexter of Dexter, Michigan, made the first purchase of land here in July 1824. Four men known as the Byron Company bought this land in 1836 and platted the village the next year. Named after the British poet Lord Byron, in the 1840s the town was one of the largest in the county. Incorporated as a village in 1873, throughout the last half of the nineteenth century Byron was a principal milling and agricultural supply center for the rich Shiawassee Valley.