Missouri became the twenty-fourth state with its admission to the Union on 10 August 1821. Its central location, navigable waterways and variable terrain attracted settlers from every part of the country as well as from abroad. Missouri was settled by people from New England, the Ohio Valley, the Appalachian region, and the upper South, as well as from Germany and other European nations.

Four major migrations influenced Missouri's settlement. The first began during the Spanish and French control when each encouraged American settlement due to their fear of British encroachment. A colony came with Colonel George Morgan and settled near New Madrid. This is known as the first distinctly American settlement. In 1797 Moses Austin helped develop a sizeable settlement at Mine a Breton, and in 1798 Daniel Boone was offered 1,000 arpents of land if he would move to Missouri and bring new settlers with him. This group settled in 1798 in what is now the area of St. Charles County. That same year a group of German-Swiss from North Carolina settled near the Whitewater Creek bottoms in present-day Cape Girardeau and Bollinger counties.

The second wave of settlers came with the acquisition of the territory by the United States in 1803. The population of the state grew from 10,000 people in 1804, to over 65,680 by 1821 when the state was admitted to the Union. During this time period, boundaries were changing rapidly, and the researcher will find it necessary to follow these changes in order to locate required records.

The third major wave was between 1820 through 1860 when the Ohio-Mississippi-Missouri river system and the extension of the Cumberland Road to the Mississippi River brought thousands of immigrants from the upper South and lower Midwest into Missouri, pushing the frontier to the Kansas border. Kentucky contributed the largest number of settlers during this period, followed by Tennessee, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The mountaineers from middle or east Tennessee and North Carolina were especially attracted to the Ozarks. Many of the Missouri and Mississippi river settlements were established by Southerners who maintained their political sympathies, slavery and Democratic politics. They settled along the Mississippi River well north of St. Louis and across the Missouri Valley. Kentucky contributed a large proportion of settlers to the middle prairie regions, while the people from Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois concentrated along the northern border and the Mississippi River. During this period, Germany also contributed a large number of settlers who settled in St. Louis and along the river counties west.

Much of the land purchased during this period was through the federal land offices located in strategic positions throughout the state. The first land offices were established in 1818 at Jackson, Franklin and St. Louis.

Immigration, for all intents and purposes, came to a stand-still during the Civil War; but with peace, the fourth wave of settlers arrived. With the help of the railroads, Europeans as well as pioneers from the prairie states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa provided the major portion of newcomers. Northerners outnumbered Southerners nearly two to one. They occupied most of the remaining land north of the Missouri River, along the Kansas border, and along the Osage and Springfield plains. During this period the cities of St. Louis, Kansas City, Joplin, Springfield, and Jefferson City also grew rapidly. By 1890 the population of Missouri had reached 2,679,185.

Missouri State Time-Line 1673-1900

• 1673 During their voyage down the Mississippi River, Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet were the first Europeans to set foot on land that would later become Missouri
• 1682 Explorer Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle took possession of the Louisiana Territory area for France (Apr. 9)
• 1724 Fort Orleans built on the north bank of the Missouri River by Etienne de Bourgmont in today’s Carroll County; it was abandoned six years later
• 1750 Approximate date of the founding of Ste. Genevieve, the first permanent white settlement
• 1762 Spain gained control of the Louisiana Territory in the Treaty of Fontainebleau (Nov. 13)
• 1764 City of St. Louis was founded by Pierre Laclede Liguest (Feb. 15)
• 1769 City of St. Charles was established by Louis Blanchette as a trading post
• 1770 The Spanish government officially assumed control of the Territory of Louisiana (May 20)
• 1773 Mine au Breton (later Potosi) founded
• 1789 Colonel George Morgan established the city of New Madrid (Feb. 14)
• 1793 Louis Lorimer received trading privileges and authority to establish a post at Cape Girardeau (Jan. 4)
• 1798 Lieutenant Governor Zenon Trudeau of the Spanish government offered Daniel Boone 1000 arpents to settle in the Louisiana Territory.
• 1800 Moses Austin made the first sheet lead and cannonballs manufactured in Missouri; Spain returned the Louisiana Territory to France (Oct. 30)
  Fort Osage
• 1803 The Louisiana Purchase was signed (Apr. 30)
• 1804 The Lewis and Clark Expedition set out from St. Louis (May 21)
• 1805 The Territory of Louisiana was established; the seat of government was St. Louis (Mar. 3)
• 1808 The city of Ste. Genevieve was incorporated (June 18); Joseph Charless founded the first newspaper in Missouri, the "Missouri Gazette"; Fort Osage was established on the Missouri River
• 1809 The Missouri Fur Company was organized in St. Louis. The abundance of animal pelts in the Mississippi Valley region played a key role in the development of the Upper Louisiana territory. Prominent members of the Company included fur trader Manuel Lisa, Auguste and Pierre Chouteau, and William Clark
• 1811 The first shocks of the New Madrid earthquakes, the worst in US history, occurred (Dec. 16)
• 1812 A portion of the Territory of Louisiana became the Territory of Missouri (June 4); The first general assembly of the Territory of Missouri met (Oct. 1); the five original counties were organized: Cape Girardeau, New Madrid, St. Charles, St. Louis, and Ste. Genevieve
• 1816 Mid-Missouri’s first circuit court opened at Cole’s Fort (July 8)
• 1817 The steamboat Zebulon M. Pike reached St. Louis, the first steamboat to navigate the Mississippi River above the mouth of the Ohio River (Aug. 2)
• 1818 The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives presented the first petition to Congress from Missouri requesting statehood (Jan. 8)
• 1820 The Missouri statehood controversy became a national issue as the issue of slavery was debated. The "Missouri Compromise" allowed Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free state, thus keeping the balance of slave and free states equal in Congress. Although Missouri was allowed to enter as a slave state, the remaining portion of the Louisiana Purchase area north of the 36° 30¢ line was to be forever free of slavery; Missouri’s Enabling Act was passed and approved by President James Monroe (Mar. 6)
  Governor Alexander McNair; Missouri’s first Constitution was adopted (July 19); Missouri’s first state elections were held and Alexander McNair was elected Missouri’s first governor (Aug. 28); Missouri's first General Assembly began its first session at the Missouri Hotel in St. Louis (Sept. 18)
• 1821 President James Monroe admitted Missouri as the 24th state; the state capitol was located in St. Charles until a permanent location was designated (Aug. 10); The Santa Fe Trail was opened by William Becknell’s successful trading expeditions to Santa Fe (Sept. 1); Governor Alexander McNair signed the bill designating the site for the City of Jefferson (Dec. 31)
• 1822 A bill to create the Missouri State Seal was adopted (Jan. 11)
• 1825 William Beaumont began research observing the human digestive system (Aug. 1)
• 1826 Jefferson City was designated Missouri’s permanent seat of government; all state records, equipment, and the Great Seal were moved to Jefferson City on October 1st.
• 1829 Missouri State Library established by law (Jan. 22)
• 1835 Writer Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) was born in Florida, Missouri (November 30)
• 1836 Missouri State Penitentiary received its first prisoner (Mar. 8)
• 1837 President Martin Van Buren issued a proclamation which completed the annexation of the Platte Purchase area to Missouri, establishing the northwestern border of the state (Mar. 28)
  The Gregory School, Bollinger Co, Mo. 1916; Missouri’s first capitol in Jefferson City was destroyed by fire (Nov. 15)
• 1838 Governor Lilburn Boggs issued the "Extermination Order" against Mormons living in Missouri, demanding that members of the Mormon church leave the state (Oct. 27)
• 1839 The Geyer Act, the foundation of Missouri’s public school system, was approved (Feb. 9)
• 1841 The University of Missouri, the first state university west of the Mississippi River, opened (Apr. 14)
• 1843 Joseph Robidoux filed a plat of a town which he called St. Joseph (July 26); Susan Elizabeth Blow, founder of the public kindergarten movement, was born in St. Louis (June 7)
• 1847 Legislation was enacted to establish a hospital for care and treatment of the insane; State Hospital No. 1 was established in Fulton and began receiving patients in 1851; Boatmen’s Bank, the oldest bank west of the Mississippi River, was established (Oct. 18); St. Louis was connected to the East Coast by telegraph (Dec. 20)
• 1849 U.S. Senator David Rice Atchison, from Missouri, was President for a day (Mar. 4); With the discovery of gold in California, the Missouri towns of St. Louis, Independence, Westport, and St. Joseph became points of departure for emigrants bound for California, making Missouri the "Gateway to the West"; The second, and most serious, cholera epidemic struck St. Louis; over 4000 people died
• 1850 The town of Kansas (later Kansas City) was incorporated (Feb. 4); Poet Eugene Field was born in St. Louis (Sept. 3)
• 1851 Groundbreaking ceremonies for the construction of the Pacific Railroad were held in St. Louis; the line was to go from St. Louis to Jefferson City and then to some point on the western boundary (July 4)
  Missouri Botanical Gardens
• 1854 President Franklin Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, allowing the notion of "popular sovereignty" in determining if a territory would be a slave state or a free state. This act set the stage for the violent Kansas-Missouri border wars where the Missouri "Border Ruffians" and the Kansas "Jayhawkers" transformed a frontier quarrel over slavery’s borders into a national issue (May 30)
• 1857 The Dred Scott decision was handed down by U.S. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney; the case originated in St. Louis. Under Missouri statutes, in 1846 Scott was allowed to sue for his freedom from slavery based on the fact that he had previously lived in a free territory (Wisconsin) before his return to the slave state of Missouri (Mar. 6); Work began on the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis, established by Henry Shaw
• 1860 The short-lived Pony Express started its first run from St. Joseph to Sacramento, California (Apr. 3)
• 1861 The Battle of Wilson’s Creek resulted in a Union retreat and southwestern Missouri was left in Confederate hands until the Battle of Pea Ridge (Aug. 10); President Abraham Lincoln revoked John Fremont’s emancipation proclamation for Missouri (Sept. 11)
  Lincoln University, c1900; Missouri’s "Rebel Legislature" adopted an Act of Secession (Oct. 28)
• 1862 In a three-day battle at Pea Ridge, Arkansas, the Union Army forced the Confederates, excluding the state guard from Missouri, to retreat; this battle effectively ended the threat of Confederate military control in Missouri (Mar. 6-8)
• 1863 William Clarke Quantrill and his band of pro-Southern guerillas raided the pro-Union town of Lawrence, Kansas, killing nearly 150 men and boys. This attack served to avenge the imprisonment of their wives, mothers, and sisters in Kansas City (Aug. 21); Brigadier General Thomas Ewing issued General Order No. 11, requiring all people living in Jackson, Cass, Bates, and northern Vernon counties to vacate the area unless their loyalty to the Union could be proven (Aug. 25)
• 1864 George Washington Carver born near Diamond, Missouri
• 1865 Slavery was abolished in Missouri by an ordinance of immediate emancipation, making Missouri the first slave state to emancipate its slaves before the adoption of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution (Jan. 11); Missouri’s second Constitution (Drake Constitution) was adopted. A group of politicians, known as "Radicals," favored emancipation of slaves and disfranchisement of persons who were sympathetic to the Confederacy during the Civil War. The Radicals included an "Ironclad Oath" in the new constitution to exclude former Confederate sympathizers from the vote and certain occupations, severely limiting their civil rights (Apr. 10)
• 1866 Lincoln Institute (later Lincoln University) was incorporated (Apr. 6) as an institution for black students in Missouri; The Missouri Historical Society was organized in St. Louis (Aug. 11)
• 1867 The Missouri Woman’s Suffrage Club was organized in St. Louis; the sole purpose of this organization was the political enfranchisement of women, the first such organization in the United States (May 8)
• 1868 Ragtime composer Scott Joplin was born in Sedalia, Missouri (Nov. 24)
• 1870 M. Lemma Barkeloo was the first woman lawyer in Missouri (St. Louis); She was the first woman trial lawyer in the United States, and the first woman lawyer to try a case in federal court.
• 1871 Phoebe W. Couzins of St. Louis became Missouri's first woman law school graduate when she graduated from the Washington University Law Department (May 8) Couzins later became the nation's first Woman U.S. Marshal in 1887
• 1872 Governor B. Gratz Brown and family moved into the newly completed Governor’s Mansion (Jan. 20)
  Eads Bridge, St. Louis, Mo.
• 1873 The Missouri Supreme Court upheld a decision by the St. Louis Circuit Court, denying Virginia Minor the right to register to vote; Susan Blow opened the first public kindergarten in the United States in St. Louis
• 1874 The first train robbery by the James Gang took place at Gads Hill (Jan. 31); The Eads Bridge, spanning the Mississippi River, was opened in St. Louis (July 4)
• 1875 Grasshopper plague in Missouri caused an estimated $15 million worth of damages; Missouri’s third Constitution was adopted (Oct. 30)
• 1881 Governor Thomas Crittenden offered a $5000 reward for the arrest and conviction of members of the Jesse James gang (July 28)
• 1882 Jesse James was killed by Bob Ford in St. Joseph (Apr. 3)
• 1891 St. Louis’ Wainwright Building, one of America’s first skyscrapers, was designed by Louis Sullivan.
• 1894 The American School of Osteopathy was incorporated by Dr. Andrew Taylor Still in Kirksville (Oct. 30)
• 1898 Volunteers for the Spanish-American War began arriving in St. Louis (May 4)
• 1899 The State Historical Society of Missouri was incorporated in Columbia (Mar. 9)