Perham Township is located in West Central Minnesota.
It is home to over One Thousand of Minnesota’s beautiful lakes. Organized March 19, 1872, was then called Marion Lake Township, for the lake adjoining its southwest corner; but March 1, 1877, it was renamed, to be like its village, by an act of the legislature.
Josiah Perham, commemorated in this name, was the first president of the Northern Pacific railroad company, in 1864-65. He was born in Wilton,. Maine, in 1803, and died in Boston, Mass., in 1868.
Very interesting biographic notes, with narration of his enthusiastic efforts for construction of this transcontinental railway line, are given in Eugene V. Smalley’s “History of the Northern Pacific Railroad”