Mount Vernon was a fledgling new town when Columbus Delano (1809-1896) moved here from Vermont at age eight, in 1817. 

He worked in a woolen mill in Lexington before studying law on his own and gaining admission to the bar in 1831, at age 22. Delano married Elizabeth Leavenworth of Mount Vernon in 1834, at age 25, and won election as Prosecuting Attorney of Knox County that same year, serving from 1834-39. 

He served in the U.S. Congress from 1845-47 and 1865-1869, when he became U.S. Commissioner of Revenue under President Ulysses S. Grant, who was his distant cousin. 

Grant then named Delano U.S. Secretary of the Interior, where he supervised the first federally-funded scientific expedition into Yellowstone in 1871. 

In 1874, he requested that the U.S. Congress protect Yellowstone and create a National Parks Service. He left Washington, D.C. in 1875 and returned to Mount Vernon to practice law and raise livestock.