Harrison County
Here in the undulating glacial plains of north central Missouri,
Harrison is one of 9 counties forming the State's border with Iowa.
Twenty-sixth in size of Missouri's 114 counties, and second largest on the
border, it was organized 1845, and named for Mo. Congressman Albert G. Harrison.
Now 720 sq. miles, it did not achieve its present size until the U.S. Supreme
Court established the Missouri-Iowa boundary in 1851.
Bethany, the seat of justice, first called Dallas, was laid out in 1845, at
direction of John Allen, county seat commissioner, later member 1861 State
Convention. Bethany is prototype of the town in the famed 1883 novel "The
Story of a Country Town" by Edgar (Ed) W. Howe (1853-1937), found of the
Atchison, Kansas, Globe. His father Henry Howe, was minister and editor in
Bethany when Ed was a boy.
Union county in War Between the States, Harrison sent a number of Federal
troops. The first railroad, a branch of the C.B. & Q., reach Bethany in
1880. The town grew as trading and shipping point. Handsome
fairgrounds there date from early 1900's.
A county of fertile Grand River basin, Harrison is a grain and livestock
farming area. In the region ceded by Iowa, Sac and Fox tribes, 1824, the
county was roamed by Indians into the 1840's. The Great Indian Trail ran
east to northwest in the county. Surveyed land was entered for sale, 1842.
Early settlers from Ohio, Ill., other parts of Mo., and the East, came in the
late 1830's. Later a number of Bohemians settled in the county.
Among county towns are Eagleville and Ridgeway, once contestants for county
seat; Cainsville, once a coal mining town; Mt. Moriah; New Hampton;
Martinsville; Gilman City; Blythedale; and Melbourne.
Union Gen. Benjamin N. Prentiss practiced law in Bethany and there educator
John R. Kirk (1851-1937) lived as a boy. He and progressive education
leader Eugene Fair (1877-1937), born in Gilman City, were both presidents of
Northeast Mo. State Teachers College. Joseph H. Burrows (1840-1918), who
introduced first bill (1881) to cut postage from 3¢ to 2¢ and named John J.
Pershing for West Point appointment, was business man and minister in Cainsville.
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