The 1787 Constitutional Convention Platted on Madison’s Isthmus

Take a close look at a street map of downtown Madison, Wisconsin, and the layout reveals an unexpected historical record: the roll call of the 1787 Constitutional Convention.

In late 1836, the Wisconsin territorial legislature gathered in a freezing, unfinished building in the lead-mining outpost of Belmont to choose a site for the permanent capital. Towns like Mineral Point, Green Bay, and Dubuque were real places with populations, businesses, and political influence. James Duane Doty, a former federal judge and shrewd land speculator, showed up with nothing more than property deeds to about a thousand acres of uninhabited woods and swamp between Lakes Mendota and Monona.

Doty needed an angle. He appealed directly to patriotism, civic pride, and self-interest. First, he named his paper city after James Madison, who had died just months earlier in June 1836. Next, he drew a diagonal street grid centered on a hilltop capitol square, naming the surrounding roadways after the delegates who signed the United States Constitution in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787.

The tactic worked. Doty handed out warm buffalo coats to shivering lawmakers, distributed choice parcels of land, and convinced the legislature to build the capital on his paper map.

Because of that 1836 land scheme, delegates who are largely forgotten outside specialized history books remain daily points of reference in modern Madison. People rent flats on Gorham, grab groceries on Willy Street (Williamson), park near Mifflin, and commute across Bassett, Paterson, or Baldwin.

Doty left a few quirks on the map. He dropped the second “e” out of New Jersey delegate David Brearley’s last name, creating “Brearly Street,” a typo the city still prints on street signs today. He cut James McHenry down to “Henry Street” so it sounded cleaner alongside the others. Thomas Fitzsimons of Pennsylvania originally had a street too, but the city renamed it Lake Street in the late 19th century.

A common mistake is confusing these names with the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, has no street on the isthmus; he was stationed in Paris as minister to France during the summer of 1787.

Madison’s downtown grid reflects the actual 39 delegates who signed the Constitution:

New Hampshire

  • John Langdon (Langdon Street)
  • Nicholas Gilman (Gilman Street)

Massachusetts

  • Nathaniel Gorham (Gorham Street)
  • Rufus King (King Street)

Connecticut

  • William Samuel Johnson (Johnson Street)
  • Roger Sherman (Sherman Avenue)

New York

  • Alexander Hamilton (Hamilton Street)

New Jersey

  • William Livingston (Livingston Street)
  • David Brearley (Brearly Street)
  • William Paterson (Paterson Street)
  • Jonathan Dayton (Dayton Street)

Pennsylvania

  • Benjamin Franklin (Franklin Street)
  • Thomas Mifflin (Mifflin Street)
  • Robert Morris (Morris Street)
  • George Clymer (Clymer Street, later renamed Doty Street)
  • Thomas Fitzsimons (Originally Fitzsimons Street, later renamed Lake Street)
  • Jared Ingersoll (Ingersoll Street)
  • James Wilson (Wilson Street)
  • Gouverneur Morris (Gouverneur Street)

Delaware

  • George Read (Read Street)
  • Gunning Bedford Jr. (Bedford Street)
  • John Dickinson (Dickinson Street)
  • Richard Bassett (Bassett Street)
  • Jacob Broom (Broom Street)

Maryland

  • James McHenry (Henry Street)
  • Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer (Jenifer Street)
  • Daniel Carroll (Carroll Street)

Virginia

  • George Washington (Washington Avenue)
  • John Blair (Blair Street)
  • James Madison Jr. (The city itself)

North Carolina

  • William Blount (Blount Street)
  • Richard Dobbs Spaight (Spaight Street)
  • Hugh Williamson (Williamson Street)

South Carolina

  • John Rutledge (Rutledge Street)
  • Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and Charles Pinckney (Pinckney Street)
  • Pierce Butler (Butler Street)

Georgia

  • William Few (Few Street)
  • Abraham Baldwin (Baldwin Street)

(Convention Secretary William Jackson also signed to attest the signatures, but Doty did not assign him a street.)

Most Americans encounter these delegates only in passing during high school civics. In Madison, their names stay in daily use simply because a frontier land promoter needed a clever hook to sell lots in a swamp

We wonder how many current students and UW Madison grads were unaware, given the comparatively smaller level of civics instruction in schools these days.

With the proliferation of online navigation, for the most part physical street maps are mere historical relics. Let’s hope the same cannot be said of our Constitution.

Of course, the Wisconsin Historical society has a newspaper clip from 1888 that, quite poetically, explains how this came to be.