 "See" List of Michigan county name etymologies.Hillsdale County was a New England settlement; its early settlers came from the northern coastal colonies – "Yankees", descended from the English Puritans who emigrated from the Old World in the 1600s.There was a wave of such settlers into the Northwest Territory during the early 1800s, many traveling on the newly-completed Erie Canal, and made safe by the conclusion of the Black Hawk War.