Established October 27, 1849, this county was named in honor of Alexander Ramsey, the first governor of Minnesota Territory. He was born near Harrisburg, Pa., September 8, 1815; studied at Lafayette College; was admitted to the practice of law in 1839; was a Whig member of Congress from Pennsylvania, 1843 to 1847; was appointed by President Taylor, April 2, 1849, as governor of this Territory; arrived in St. Paul, May 27; and commenced his official duties here June 1, 1849. He continued in this office to May 15, 1853. In 1851 Governor Ramsey negotiated important treaties with the Sioux at Traverse des Sioux and Mendota, and in 1863 with the Ojibways where the Pembina trail crossed the Red Lake river, by these treaties opening to settlement the greater part of southern and western Minnesota. He was the second mayor of St. Paul in 1855. After the admission of Minnesota as a state, he was elected its second governor, and held this office from January 2, 1860, to July 10, 1863, during the very trying times of the civil war and the Sioux war. Being in Washington on business for the state when the news of the fall of Fort Sumter was received, he at once tendered to President Lincoln a regiment of one thousand men from Minnesota, this being the first offer of armed support to the government. Ramsey was United States senator, 1863 to 1875; and secretary of war, in the cabinet of President Hayes, 1879 to 1881. He was president of the Minnesota Historical Society, 1849–63, and from 1891 until his death in St. Paul, April 22, 1903. The Minnesota legislature has provided that his statue will be placed in the Statuary Hall of the national capitol, being one of the two in this state thus honored.

When this county was first established in 1849, as one of the nine counties into which the new territory was originally divided, it reached north to Mille Lacs and to the upper Mississippi in the present Aitkin county. In 1857, with the formation of Anoka, Isanti, Mille Lacs, and Aitkin counties, Ramsey retained only a small part of its former area and became the smallest county of Minnesota. Its county seat, St. Paul, has been continuously the capital of the territory and state.

St. Paul, the county seat and the capital of Minnesota, first settled by Pierre Parrant in 1838, received its name from a little Catholic chapel built in 1841 under the direction of Father Lucian Galtier, who in the preceding year had come to Mendota, near Fort Snelling. The history of the building and naming of the chapel, with the adoption of the name for the village and city, was written in part as follows by Galtier in 1864, at the request of Bishop Grace.

“In 1841, in the month of October, logs were prepared and a church erected, so poor that it would well remind one of the stable at Bethlehem. It was destined, however, to be the nucleus of a great city. On the 1st day of November, in the same year, I blessed the new basilica, and dedicated it to ‘Saint Paul, the apostle of nations.’ I expressed a wish, at the same time, that the settlement would be known by the same name, and my desire was obtained. I had, previously to this time, fixed my residence at Saint Peter’s [Mendota], and as the name of Paul is generally connected with that of Peter, and the gentiles being well represented in the new place in the persons of the Indians, I called it Saint Paul. The name ‘Saint Paul,’ applied to a town or city, seemed appropriate. The monosyllable is short, sounds well, and is understood by all denominations of Christians.… Thenceforth the place was known as ‘Saint Paul Landing,’ and, later on, as ‘Saint Paul.’ ” (History of the City of St. Paul, by Williams, 1876, pages 111–112.)

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St. Paul was organized as a village or town November 1, 1849, and was incorporated as a city March 4, 1854, then having an area of 2,560 acres, or four square miles. It received a new city charter March 6, 1868, when its area was 5.45 square miles, to which about seven square miles were added February 29, 1872, and again three square miles March 6, 1873. West St. Paul, now Riverside, which had belonged to Dakota county, was annexed November 16, 1874, by proclamation of the popular vote ratifying the legislative act of March 5, 1874, whereby the total area of the city was increased to 20 square miles. Further large annexations, March 4, 1885, and February 8, 1887, adding the former McLean and Reserve townships, extended St. Paul to its present area, 55.44 square miles, which is very nearly the same as the area of Minneapolis.

Prof. A. W. Williamson, in his list of geographic names in this state received from the Sioux, wrote: “Imnizha ska,—intnizha, ledge; ska, white; the Dakota name of St. Paul, given on account of the white sandstone cropping out in the bluffs.” In the simplest words, this Sioux name means “White Rock.”

As a familiar sobriquet, St. Paul is often called “the Saintly City;” Minneapolis similarly is “the Mill City” or “the Flour City;” and the two are very widely known as ”the Twin Cities.”