Madison County

I am Rebecca Maloney, Webmistress and Coordinator for this Madison County, Florida. I hope you enjoy your visit. Please email me if you have any suggestions or contributions you would like to make.

The photo is a picture post card of Downtown Madison circa 1930, from the Madison Collection at the Florida Memory Project

 

Madison County Was Established

Madison County Florida was named in 1827 in honor of James Madison, fourth President of the United States. At the time Madison County was chartered it was billed as Florida's largest county. This took place long before Florida was admitted to the Union, in 1845. Since then, the county has been divided and the following were created from Madison County: Taylor, Lafayette and Dixie Counties. Madison County was a major hub on the migration southward of our ancestors from Alabama, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia and all points northward. Many descendants of Florida's hardy pioneers find their ancestor probably tarried for a year or two in Madison County, before heading southward. The city of Madison is the county seat. Cotton planters settled the town of Madison in 1838, though there were residents here before that. The county was established in 1827 and by 1850 the county population had grown to more than 5,000 people.
The world's largest long staple cotton gin was located in Madison before the boll weevil arrived in 1916, and wiped out the cotton industry. In the south, cotton truly was king, it is how most families made a living. The cotton years memories are preserved in a small park near the Amtrak railroad station in the south side of town. In the park is a 16-foot drive wheel for a 500 horse power engine that once pulled 65 gins in what was said to be the world's largest cotton processing plant.
The oldest house in town, still occupied, was built in 1849 and a small wooden Episcopal church, built in 1843, is still in use. In the center of Madison is the Wardlaw-Smith-Goza house, a stately mansion that dates from 1860 and served as a Confederate hospital during the War between the States.

Research Resources

Make sure you check the "Research Resources" section! There are books on line: History of YOUR COUNTY, c. 1868 (it has all kinds of names and dates of YOUR COUNTY families), indexes of books: "The First 100 Years", also "Yankeetown News" from 1890, books for sale, newspaper articles beginning in 1877, helpful links, look up volunteers and local researchers to help you out.

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"The Chosen"

We are the chosen. In each family there is one who seems called to find the ancestors. To put flesh on their bones and make them live again. To tell the family story and to feel that somehow they know and approve. Doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but, instead, breathing life into all who have gone before. We are the story tellers of the tribe. All tribes have one. We have been called, as it were, by our genes. Those who have gone before cry out to us: Tell our story. So, we do. In finding them, we somehow find ourselves. How many graves have I stood before now and cried? I have lost count. How many times have I told the ancestors, "You have a wonderful family; you would be proud of us.". How many times have I walked up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me? I cannot say. It goes beyond just documenting facts. It goes to who I am, and why I do the things I do. It goes to seeing a cemetery about to be lost forever to weeds and indifference and saying - I can't let this happen. The bones here are bones of my bone and flesh of my flesh. It goes to doing something about it. It goes to pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish. How they contributed to what we are today. It goes to respecting their hardships and losses, their never giving in or giving up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family. It goes to deep pride that the fathers fought and some died to make and keep us a nation. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us. It is of equal pride and love that our mothers struggled to give us birth, without them we could not exist, and so we love each one, as far back as we can reach. That we might be born who we are. That we might remember them. So we do. With love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence, because we are they and they are the sum of who we are. So, as a scribe called, I tell the story of my family. It is up to that one called in the next generation to answer the call and take my place in the long line of family storytellers. That is why I do my family genealogy, and that is what calls those young and old to step up and restore the memory or greet those who we had never known before."

by Della M. Cummings Wright; Rewritten by her granddaughter Dell Jo Ann McGinnis Johnson; Edited and Reworded by Tom Dunn, 1943."