Jefferson County Missouri History

694 Words3 Pages

Jefferson County Missouri was first organized in 1818 and named Jefferson County in honor of the former 1801 to 1809 President Thomas Jefferson. The territory that is now Jefferson County Missouri was once under control of the Spanish in the 1700’s. The Spanish gave the settlers a certain amount of land to live on, which was mostly along the Mississippi river. The first town in the county was New Hartford, the town was laid out in 1806 by two men John W. Honey and Christian Wilt. The exact location of the town is unknown, but it is thought to be somewhere on the Mississippi River, near the present location of Herculaneum just one of the ten cities in Jefferson County Missouri.

Most early names in Jefferson County Missouri were of French origin until about 1850, when English and Irish names began to be common in the county. The origin of Jefferson County Missouri is deeply rooted in the purchase of the Louisiana Territory which came from France in 1803 by the United States and its maternal name Missouri comes from an Act of Congress on June 4, 1812, which changed the name of the upper Louisiana Territory to the Missouri territory. Jefferson County Missouri is becoming more and more suburban in the northern eastern part of the county, but still has multiple rural areas, many outdoor areas, and …show more content…

It wasn’t long until Jefferson County entered into the teen years and World War I. While war injects much sadness and grief, it also brings new inventions, which produce progress for the future, and at the close of the war in 1918, Jefferson County was rolling along with the horseless carriage-the automobile. The county roads of mud and deep ruts, which served well the iron wagon wheel, failed to impress our new generation of automotive

Open Document