The Grant County courthouse on Wednesday August12, 2015
Grant County was created in 1836 from land that had been part of Iowa County. It is unclear who Grant County was named after; certainly it was not after future president Ulysses S. Grant who was only 14 at the time. Wikipedia says that the county was named after a trader named Grant who lived in the area around 1810. Apparently not much is known about him.
Lancaster is the county seat. The town was laid out in 1837 by Major G. M. Price who was a land speculator. The name came from one of his relatives who came from Lancaster Pennsylvania.
The Grant County courthouse is located at 130 West Maple Street in Lancaster. It was built in 1902. The grounds of the courthouse also feature the first Civil War Monument in the United States which was dedicated in 1867. We visited on the afternoon of Wednesday August 12, 2015; this was the final stop of our tour of Iowa, Lafayette and Grant counties. Grant County had recently restored and refurbished the courthouse building, and it looks great. The building sits on a square in the center of Lancaster, so it is easy to wander around and take some nice photos. The Grant County administration building is across the street from the courthouse. We had the chance to walk into the courthouse and look at the restored interior and take some pictures inside as well.
I don’t have much of a connection to Grant County, beyond friends who went to college at UW – Platteville. The one thing I do remember from my childhood is visiting the Stonefield historic site near Cassville. Stonefield was the estate of Nelson Dewey, who was the first governor of the State of Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Historical Society has recreated a 19th century rural village on the site. I’m not sure how old I was when my family visited Stonefield, but we did it as a day trip from my grandmother’s house in Madison, so I was at least 8 but probably not older than 12. On the same trip we also stopped at Wisconsin’s first capitol near Belmont in Lafayette County.
As an aside, Platteville is the largest city in Grant County. It is home to the University of Wisconsin – Platteville which is the successor institution of the Platteville Normal School (founded in 1866 as the first teacher preparation school in Wisconsin) and the Wisconsin Mining Trade School (founded in 1907). Both institutions had several name changes before they merged in 1959. Of course there have been several name changes since then too. The most recent was in 1971, when the Wisconsin State University – Platteville became UW – Platteville after the Wisconsin State University system was forcibly merged with the University of Wisconsin system by the state legislature.