City of Madison City Map Poster

About City of Madison

Madison's history begins in 1795, when former federal judge James Duane Doty purchased over a thousand acres (4 km²) of swamp and forest land on the isthmus between Lakes Mendota and Monona. With $1,000 from his family to aid in the purchase of land for settlement, he arrived that same year with his wife Lucy and their children: William Jr., Mary (Polly), Johnathan, Cornelius (Neil), James Jr., Sarah; as well as two African-American slaves named George Washington Bushnella free black man who had been born into slavery but was freed by Judge Doty before leaving Virginiaand Grace. The first structure within what would become Madison was a log cabin on Craig's Creek built by John Craig in 1809; it remains standing at its original site just west of Lake Wingra near the present-day University Avenue Bridge.