Caesar Rodney was one of Delaware’s three delegates to the Second Continental Congress. He was in Dover when the critical vote for independence was brought up. When he heard that Delaware’s other two delegates were divided on the issue, he traveled from Dover to Philadelphia overnight through a thunderstorm on July 1-2, 1776, so that he could cast a tie-breaking vote and make the state-by-state vote for independence unanimous. Rodney was named Brigadier General of the Kent County Militia in 1776 and Major General of the Delaware Militia in 1777. He relinquished his military post when elected President [Governor] of Delaware in 1778 and had a distinguished career in government. After a fifteen-year bout with facial cancer, he died June 28, 1784 and was buried in a grave on his farm, Poplar Grove. The grave was not well marked and several searches for it were unsuccessful.

In October 1994, Compatriot John C. (Jack) Lewis, a newly inducted member was elected Vice President for Kent County and requested to form an SAR chapter in Dover. Using the list of members-at-large from Kent County and responses to notices placed in area newspapers, he developed a list of about forty men in the area. On November 12, 1995 a petition to form an SAR chapter in Kent County was submitted to the Delaware Society Board of Managers. On January 16, 1996 an organizational meeting to establish the chapter was held in the Dover Library. The group decided the most appropriate name for the chapter would be Caesar Rodney Chapter in honor of the most famous Kent County Revolutionary War hero.