Charles B. Kennedy arrived here in March 1878 and found no tree in sight and no sign of human habitation, only paths made by Indians and buffalo leading to a nearby flowing spring, which led to his decision to settle here. He took up a tree claim and homesteaded on the adjoining 320 acres that now comprise part of the city of Madison, built a temporary sod house, and envisioned a town site because of its central location and the likelihood that a railroad would come to his holdings. In 1880 he was named Territorial Representative to the legislature in Yankton, and his crowning achievement was passage of legislation founding the city of Madison on its present site. The new town was established in July 1880, and after bitter rivalry with old Madison and Herman, the county seat moved here in late December following the mysterious removal of the county safe from old Madison to the main street of the new town. As Kennedy had anticipated, the first train arrived on January 12, 1881. He also secured legislation locating Dakota Normal School in Madison under the legislative act of February 28, 1881, and deeded 20 acres for the college on condition that the land be held in perpetuity so long as the institution remained a teacher education school. Born in a log house in Moscow, Maine, on March 28, 1840, Kennedy married Mae Ella Williams on May 20, 1873, and they had two sons, C. Leroy and Dean M. Kennedy. He became a teacher, publisher, banker, and real estate developer, attended Pittsfield Institute and later Maine State College after a grade school education in a log schoolhouse, served a term as District Superintendent of Schools, founded the LeRoy Independent in LeRoy, Minnesota, then moved farther west to settle at what is now Madison. His career also included organizing several banks and loan and real estate companies in Madison and election to the House of Representatives of the Territorial Legislature in sessions at Yankton in 1880-81 and at Bismarck in 1886-87, and the Kennedy family lived in Madison during its early years of development in a home one block south of this site.