Gallatin
This Grand River town, platted in 1837 as the seat of Daviess County, is
named in honor of Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, 1801-1813.
Settlers were in the area as early as 1830 and in 1836 the county was formed.
Adam-ondi-Ahman, 5 miles northwest was settled by the Mormons on direction
of Prophet Joseph Smith, 1838. The name is said to mean "Adam's
Consecrated Land," for here, according to Smith, Adam blessed all the patriarchs
before his death. At this place, also known as "Adam's Grave," Smith
announced the discovery of the altar, on a nearby hill, where, he said, these
ancients worshipped. Hostilities broke out between the Mormons and the
anti-Mormons and a sharp skirmish took place in Gallatin. In 1839, when
the Mormons were expelled from Missouri, Adam-ondi-Ahman was abandoned.
Established in Gallatin were the Daviess County Female Academy and Masonic
Hall, chartered in 1855. In 1893, Grand River College was moved here from
Edinburg in Grundy County.
Gallatin, settled on land ceded the U.S. by the Osage Indians, 1808, and
by the Sauk, Fox, and Iowa tribes, 1824, served a fertile agricultural area of
the Green Hills Region of North Missouri.
Nearby is Grand River, called by the Indians Nischma-Honja and by early
French writers Riviere Grande. This chief river of north Missouri has
eroded a rock-walled valley paralleling the valley, a few miles east, which
before the glacial age carried the Waters of the North, now the Missouri River,
to the south.
Gallatin was the scene of the trial of Frank James, elder brother of
Jesse, after he voluntarily surrendered to Gov. Thomas T. Crittenden on charges
of participating in a holdup of a train near Winston to the southwest.
The trial, 1882, highlighted by the appearance of Confederate Gen. Joseph O.
Shelby as a defense witness, end in acquittal for Frank James.
Here lived A.M. Dockery, Governor of Missouri, 1901-1905, and Joshua W.
Alexander, Secretary of Commerce of U.S. 1919-1921. ~ text of marker