History
Breen and Breiting Townships were part of Menominee County for over a quarter of a century before they were included in land area which, in 1891, became part of Michigan's youngest county, Dickinson.
The land of the Menominee Indians, which gave Menominee County its name, is thought to have been visited first by French explorers, missionaries and trappers. In 1671 Saint Lusson took possession for France "all of the lands from the seas of the north and west to the south seas," and for almost a century the French flag flew over the land. It included what is now Breen Township.
When England won the French and Indian War (1754 to 1763), fought for control of the Great Lakes Region and Ohio Valley, Menominee land came under the English flag.
Twenty years later, at the close of the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), it passed to the new nation, under the stars and stripes of the United States of America. It was part of the Northwest Territory organized in 1787.
We look, then, to accounts and records of Menominee County for earliest references to Breen Township. Researching this township is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Records were lost in archives of large companies long since gone out of existence - companies organized specifically to mine or log out the natural resources on land purchased or leased from the United States government. When timber or ores were depleted, the companies frequently changed hands or went on to other pursuits in other areas of the country. Many records were destroyed.
Menominee County was organized in 1863. Just three years later - the year after John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln - the Breen Brothers, Thomas and Bartley, timber cruisers in the business of buying and selling pine and mineral lands, discovered an out-cropping of iron ore in Section 22, Town 39, Range 28. It was the first iron ore strike on the Menominee Range and became the gateway to one of the richest fields of ore in American history. After 1891, the Range included areas in Dickinson and Iron counties, Michigan, and Florence County, WI.
Located in what later was named the Waucedah are, the discovery became known as Breen's mine and later the township was named after the discoverers.