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The File Manager for Kansas USGenWeb Archives Project is:
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Return to the County Table.

The Territorial Legislature of 1855 organized Breckinridge County, attaching it to Madison County for civil, criminal and military purposes. It was named to honor Vice-President Breckinridge. The county seat of Madison County was Columbia, situated one and a half miles southeast of Emporia, and founded during this year by the first settler in Breckinridge County, Charles H. Withington, assisted by T. S. Huffaker and Wm. D. Harris, the other two incorporators. The bogus statutes which brought Breckinridge County into being, fixed the terms of the United States District Court in 1855, on the second Thursday of October, and in the county of Madison on the third Thursday of October.₁

GREENWOOD County was named in honor of Greenwood, United States Land Commissioner, under pierce and Buchanan. It was first laid off by the bogus Legislature of 1855-56, but was for a number of years thereafter unorganized territory. As at first laid out, the county was a very nearly square tract of uniform size with its neighbors, but when in 1867 Madison County was abolished, and its north part given to Breckinridge (now Lyon) County, the lower portion, to a point three miles above Madison, was added to Greenwood.₂

MADISON County was formed 1855, divided 1861-1864 into Breckenridge(Later Lyon) and Greenwood. ₃

1. Breckinridge County

2. Greenwood County
William G. Cutler's History of the State of Kansas
published in 1883 by A. T. Andreas, Chicago, IL.

3. Ancestry's Red Book American State, County & Town Sources,
Edited by Alice Eichholz, PH. D., C. G.,
Pub. Ancestry P. O. Box 476
Salt Lake City, UT 84110

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