 The county was created on March 5, 1853, with territory partitioned from Wabasha County.It was named for James Madison Goodhue (1810–1852), who published the first newspaper in the territory, "The Minnesota Pioneer".The county was originally settled exclusively by "Yankee" settlers, meaning that they both came to Goodhue County either directly from the six New England states or from upstate New York, where they were born to parents who had moved to that region from the six New England states in the immediate aftermath of the American Revolution, and that they were descended from the English Puritans who emigrated to North America during the early 1600s.