Modern-day Jefferson sports the world's only perambulator museum and a historical complex including several restored 19th-century buildings.

He envisioned the new settlement as a "Philadelphia of the West," and early plans for the village were based upon the layout of that city.

A cabin was erected by Granger's agent in 1804, but the settlement's first permanent residents arrived only in 1805: the Samuel Wilson family.

Wilson himself died after two weeks of herculean effort to prepare for the winter, but his family stayed on as the first citizens of Jefferson.

[5] In 1831, the two men formed a law practice in Jefferson and worked together until Giddings was elected to Congress in 1838.

Both were instrumental in the foundation of the Republican Party and defied the "Gag Rule" barring discussion of slavery prior to the American Civil War.

Abolitionist John Brown spoke in the village, and several of its houses acted as stations on the Underground Railway.

During the American Civil War, it trained Union recruits at Fort Giddings, which stood in the village at the current site of the fairgrounds.

Wade later was merely one vote shy of assuming the acting Presidency due to the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson.

[7] According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 2.52 square miles (6.53 km2), all land.