Medary Townsite

The bronze names Thomas Smith Williamson only as the man who warned the settlers, but he knew the Dakota better than anyone at Medary. A Yale-trained physician born in South Carolina, he went to them as a missionary for the American Board in 1835, worked at Lac qui Parle until 1846, and followed the people onto their Minnesota reservation in 1852, staying until the war of 1862. With Stephen Return Riggs he made the first translation of the Bible into Dakota, finished about three months before he died at St. Peter, Minnesota, on June 24, 1879.

What the plaque says

Medary Townsite 1857-58 1871-79 The Dakota Land Company of St. Paul, hoping to make this site the capital of a proposed Dakota Territory, started a town here, naming it for Samuel Medary, Governor of Minnesota Territory. Towns were also begun at Flandreau and Sioux Falls, the same year, 1857. The site was settled when the Fort Ridgely and South Pass Wagon Road was built through here to the Missouri in 1857. Samuel A. Medary, son of the Governor, was the Engineer and Col. Wm. H. Nobles was its promoter and builder. A rock ford was made over the Big Sioux. The area of South Dakota east of the Big Sioux was ceded by the Santee Sioux in 1851, and that west to the Missouri was ceded by the Yankton Sioux in 1859. The Sioux under a Yankton chief, Smutty Bear, regarding the white settlers as trespassers, determined to drive them away. A warning was sent to the set- tlers by Dr. Thos. S. Williamson. Their leader, Franklin J. DeWitt, prepared the settlers to resist but finally agreed to leave peaceably in June 1858. The Sioux burned their buildings and destroyed their crops. Flandreau was evacuated and only Sioux Falls remained until the Sioux Uprising in 1862. In 1869 permanent white settlement began in this vicinity, again known as Medary, with the Trygstads, Jermstads, and Chris Baltrud. Settlers were of Norwegian and old American stock. Brookings County was created in 1862. Medary was named as the county seat on Jan. 21, 1871 and so remained until 1879, when most of the stores and houses were moved north 7 miles to Brookings, as the railroad reached that point. Erected 1957 by Brookings County Commissioners and State Highway Commission

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• First Convention in Brookings County — steps away
• Medary First Townsite Dakota Territory — steps away
• Brookings County / Moody County — 1.0 mi
• Hagensick's Resort — 3.9 mi