Place:Webster, Missouri, United States

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Webster County is a county located in the U.S. state of Missouri. As of the 2010 census, the population was 36,202. Its county seat is Marshfield. The county was organized in 1855 and named for U.S. Senator and U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster.

Webster County is part of the Springfield, MO Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Contents

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Webster County was organized on March 3, 1855, and encompasses some of the highest extensive upland area of Missouri's Ozarks. The judicial seat is Marshfield, which lies 1,490 feet above sea level. Webster County is the highest county seat in the state of Missouri. Pioneer Legislator John F. McMahan named the county and county seat for Daniel Webster, and his Marshfield, Massachusetts home.

Marshfield was laid out in 1856 by R.H. Pitts, on land that was given by C.F. Dryden and W.T. and B.F.T. Burford. Until a courthouse was built, the county business was conducted at Hazelwood where Joseph W. McClurg, later Governor of Missouri, operated a general store. Today's Carthage Marble courthouse was built in 1939-1941 and is the county's third.

During the U.S. Civil War, a small force of pro-Southern troops was driven out of Marshfield in February 1862, and ten months later a body of Confederates was routed east of town. On January 9, 1863, General Joseph O. Shelby’s troops burned the stoutly built Union fortification at Marshfield and at Sand Springs, evacuated earlier. By 1862, the telegraph line passed near Marshfield on a route later called the “Old Wire Road.”

A part of the 1808 Osage Native American land cession, the county was settled in the early 1830s by pioneers from Kentucky and Tennessee. A Native American trail crossed southern Webster County and many prehistoric mounds are in the area.

The railroad-building boom of the post Civil War period stimulated the county's growth as a dairy, poultry, and livestock producer. The Atlantic & Pacific (Frisco) Railroad was built through Marshfield in 1872, and by 1883 the Kansas City, Springfield, and Memphis (Frisco) crossed the county. Seymour, Rogersville, Fordland and Niangua grew up along the railroad routes.

Early schools in the county were Marshfield Academy, chartered in 1860; Mt. Dale Academy, opened in 1873; and Henderson Academy, chartered in 1879.

On April 18, 1880, an intense tornado measuring F4 on the Fujita scale struck Marshfield. Its damage path was wide and long. The tornado killed 99 people and injured 100, and it is said that 10% of Marshfield's residents were killed and all but 15 of its buildings were destroyed. The composition “Marshfield Cyclone” by the African-American musician John W. (Blind) Boone gave wide publicity to the cyclone, which is still listed as one of the top ten natural disasters in the history of the nation.

Astronomer Edwin P. Hubble (1889–1953) was born in Marshfield and attended through the third grade in the public school system. A replica of the Hubble telescope sits in the courthouse yard and the Marshfield stretch of I-44 was named in his honor.

Marshfield holds claim to the oldest Independence Day parade west of the Mississippi River. Former President George Herbert Walker Bush and wife Barbara visited the parade on July 4, 1991, while campaigning for the presidency through Missouri. Webster County also boasts the longest continuous county fair in the state of Missouri.

The annual Seymour Apple Festival, established in 1973, has grown to one of Missouri's largest free celebrations, with estimated crowds of more than 30,000 congregating on the Seymour public square each second weekend of September. The festival pays tribute to Seymour's apple industry, which began in the 1840s, with Seymour being called "The Land Of The Big Red Apple" around the turn of the 20th century, when Webster County produced more than 50 percent of the state's apple crop.

Timeline

Date Event Source
1854 Land records recorded Source:Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources
1855 County formed Source:Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources
1855 Court records recorded Source:Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources
1855 Marriage records recorded Source:Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources
1856 Probate records recorded Source:Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources
1860 First census Source:Population of States and Counties of the United States: 1790-1990
1870 No significant boundary changes after this year Source:Population of States and Counties of the United States: 1790-1990
1883 Birth records recorded Source:Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources

Population History

source: Source:Population of States and Counties of the United States: 1790-1990
Census Year Population
1860 7,099
1870 10,434
1880 12,175
1890 15,177
1900 16,640
1910 17,377
1920 16,609
1930 16,148
1940 17,226
1950 15,072
1960 13,753
1970 15,562
1980 20,414
1990 23,753

Research Tips

External links

www.rootsweb.com/~mowebste/webster.htm

There is a Goodspeed's local history for this county, written in 1889, available free and searchable at: [1]

Searchable death certificates, with images, for deaths between 1910 and 1957, are available free online at [2] Searchable birth and death records for pre-1910 births/stillbirths/deaths are available free online at [3] Both of the above databases are from the Missouri State Archives.

This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Webster County, Missouri. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.