Lawton is a village in southeastern Van Buren County, Michigan, United States.

The Village of Lawton came into existence in 1848 when the Michigan Central Railroad reached this destination.

Nathan Lawton who the village is named after, was from Waterford, New York and had purchased property when it became available when Michigan received statehood.

Though Nathan Lawton never lived here two of his sons, George and Charles moved here and made this town their home.

Around 1860 a few local men including both of the Lawton brothers began experimenting with growing grapes.

The history of cellular phone technology began on December 11, 1947 with a Bell Labs internal memo written by Douglas H. Ring describing the idea of Rae Young of the hexagonal cell concept for a cellular mobile telephone system.

In 1945, Young began work on mobile radiotelephone systems in vehicles for coverage of urban areas and along highways.

Young served as chairman of a Radio Manufacturers Association (RMA) subcommittee TR8.9 on systems standards for mobile communications equipment.

In 1947, W. Rae Young proposed what are now called cell phones in a report to the RMA Systems Committee.

[2] Coworker Douglas H. Ring at Bell Labs, liked Young's idea about locating many mobile phone towers in a hexagonal cellular arrangement throughout each city so that every mobile phone user would be able to communicate from at least one cell through the telephone system.

In 1964, W. Rae Young was made an IEEE Fellow “for contributions to mobile radio and data communications systems”.

Family Rae Young Jr. was born in Lawton, Michigan, a small rural town.

In February, 1937 Rae Young Jr. married Mary Lou Traywick (1915–1975) during their senior year at the University of Michigan.

In 1980, Rae met a widow Betty Wood, a retired crystallographer from Bell Labs.