County of site: Grundy County
Location of marker: Main St. & W. 7th St., courthouse lawn, Trenton
Memorial erected by: State Historical Society of Missouri and State Highway Commission
Date Erected: 1953
Memorial Text:
TRENTON
Trenton, Settled in 1834, became the seat of Grundy County in 1841, when James S. Lomax gave 80 acres for a townsite. The county is named for Felix Grundy, United State Attorney General 1838-1839. The town name is from Trenton, N.J.
Important in the history of Grundy Co. is Grand River College, founded in nearby Edinburg in 1850 and chartered in 1851. In this pioneer school in coeducation, women and men offered college work on an equal footing at the outstandingly early date of 1850. A grade school now stands on the old college site. Among distinguished alumni is Gen. Enoch H. Crowder (1859-1932), author of the Selective Service Act of 1917. Nearby Crowder State Park is established in memory of General Crowder, who was born in Edinburg.
In Grundy County's fabulous "Heatherly War," 1836, Missouri's top military leaders, a regiment and two companies turned out to fight the Indians maliciously reported on the warpath by the Heatherly family to cover their own misdeeds. The "Army" soon disbanded when no Indians were found.
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Trenton serves a rich agricultural area. Grain and livestock farming predominates in this region of productive prairies, stream-fed valleys and green-wooded hills. In the 1870's, the city became a railroad division.
In Trenton's first 100 years, 3 colleges were established here. Avalon College, founded by United Brethren at Avalon, Mo., 1869-1873, was moved to Trenton, 1890. In 1900, founders of Ruskin College bought Avalon to establish a branch of an English socialistic movement. This group formed cooperative businesses and the school, but the whole venture failed, 1905. The present day Trenton Junior College, a pioneer in the public school junior college movement, was established, 1925.1
Arthur M. Hyde, Governor of Missouri, 1921-1925, and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, 1925-1933, lived here. J.R. Atkinson one of the co-founders of the Braille Institute of America, was born in nearby Galt. Jewett Norris, early resident gave $50,000 for the library, 1890. Nearby town is the Gen. W.P. Thompson House, the oldest in the county.
updates since marker erection in 1953:
1. Trenton Junior College became North Central Missouri College in 1988.
Major General Enoch H. Crowder, founder of the nation's Selective Service System, was born in Edinburg in 1859.
The 1910 Grundy County Fair featured horse racing on a half-mile dirt track. The grandstand opposite of the judges' stand. seated about five thousand people.