Ruby, MI

Ruby is a St. Clair County census-designated place in west-central Clyde Township, centered around Brott and Abbottsford Roads and using the North Street 48049 postal area. The settlement grew beside the Black River in the 1850s, and John Beard became its first postmaster in 1854. By 1876, Ruby had a post office, plow manufactory, planing mill, and church, giving the crossroads a small industrial and commercial core long before it became a CDP.

The Ruby Methodist Church congregation organized in 1854 at the North Street Schoolhouse; the church later met in John Beard's store building, and the building was moved to its present location in 1928. That early cluster gave the settlement a recognizable center. Clyde Township's wider settlement pattern also includes North Street, Atkins, and Abbottsford, places tied together by mills, schools, churches, and the Pere Marquette Railway. Ruby's present boundary is residential and rural, but its older name still points to the mid-1800s crossroads that formed around the river, roads, post office, and church.