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Last Updated:
5 April 2025

Pioneer Family Certificates

The Eaton County Pioneer Family Certificate is sponsored by the Eaton County Genealogical Society.  Our purpose is to honor and collect data about the early residents of Eaton County, Michigan and their descendants.  This information will benefit the Genealogical Society by adding valuable history of our early settlers and providing information for future research in our county.

We are asking the descendants of early pioneers to apply for a certificate, which will be given in three categories recognizing the settlement and growth of Eaton County.  These Certificates are of framable quality with the name of the Applicant and the Ancestor.  The Certificate will be based on the year that the Ancestor first settled in Eaton County.  The categories are:

Pioneers -- pre 1850
Settler -- 1851 - 1900
Builder -- 1901 - 1910

ELIGIBILITY
The applicant must directly descend from an ancestor who resided in Eaton County, prior to the 1910 date.  The applicant must be able to prove descent from the ancestor (male or female) by an official record or records from each generation.  Current Eaton County residency is not required to receive a certificate.

INSTRUCTIONS
First,  read the attached Instructions for information on how to fill out the application.   

Next, complete the Pioneer Family Certification Application. 

Then, complete, to the best of your ability, the Generation Chart. Use extra sheets, as needed, to include any available additional information such as names of all children of direct descendants, who they married, places of residency of all ancestors and any information of a biographical nature that you feel is pertinent. Be detailed ~~ the more information you include, the more complete the records will be. Photocopies of any pertinent or vital information will be helpful.  

Click Here to open the complete document in Word.  (Note: The actual Word document provides boxes to easily type information for the Application and Generation Chart.)

All applications and enclosed materials will become the property of the Eaton County Genealogical Society and will be filed in the library of the Eaton County Genealogical Society. Researchers who visit this library will have access to these files and the information in them may help with their family research.

A fee of $7.50 will help defray the printing and mailing cost of the certificate.

To see a list of Pioneer families we currently have, please click here.