By Staff
LANSING - The Livonia Historical Society and the Michigan Humanities Council announce the launching of the book Michigan Shadow Towns, a compilation of the histories of 128 small communities in 64 of the state's 83 counties.
Michigan Shadow Towns is partially funded by an $8,000 grant from the Michigan Humanities Council and is co-sponsored by the Livonia Historical Society and Redford Township Historical and Genealogical Society. 
Michigan Shadow Towns describes villages, including Edwardsburg in Cass County.
Most of them are unincorporated, which have survived near or total demises generally caused by local economic failures and one or more significant declines in population.
Many of them had been reported or written off as ghost towns.
Some of the towns are still declining and likely to vanish altogether while others have come back from near ghost town status to become more vibrant than before.
Michigan Shadow Towns is the result of three years of study of more than 750 towns in every county in Michigan.
The study included correspondence, surveys and interviews with local historians, librarians, town and township officials, elderly and long-time residents, postmasters, storekeepers and other townspeople in each of the 128 communities.
It also included examination of reference and archival materials at state, regional, county, local and university libraries and correspondence and interviews with numerous Michigan history authors and researchers.
The 260-page book's town histories are concisely and compactly presented with nearly 200 photographs and maps. Town histories are presented in three main sections, the first two covering 84 villages in 49 Lower Peninsula counties and a third section covering 44 towns in Upper Peninsula counties.
Each town history includes highlights of its early history, heyday, decline and survival, and reasons why the village is hanging on or thriving.
The town histories include prominent figures in Michigan history and others involved in their primary industries. The book is Scott's third on Michigan town histories. His previous book in 2001 on Detroit's early villages was distributed to Detroit area schools.