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Lincoln County, Missouri

Lincoln County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named for Benjamin Lincoln, Revolutionary War general.

Demographics:

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History of Lincoln County

Lincoln County is located in the east-central part of Missouri, and has an area of 620 square miles. It is bounded on the north by Pike County, on the west by Montgomery County, on the south by St. Charles and Warren Counties, and on the east by the Mississippi River, which separates it from Calhoun County in Illinois. It was organized into a county on December 14, 1818. The first permanent American settler within the county, and the man responsible for its name, was Major Christopher Clark, for whom Clark's Fort (q.v.) and Clark Township (q.v.) are named. Major Clark was born in Lincoln County, North Carolina, in 1766 and came out to Missouri in the first years of the 19th century. He was a genuine frontiersman, and when he became a member of the legislature in 1818 he made himself an earnest advocate of the establiahment of the new county. He made a speech in which he said: "Mr. Speaker, I'm in favor of the new county. I was born in Lincoln County, North Carolina: I have lived a year or so in Lincoln County, Kentucky, and I want to live and die in Lincoln County, Missouri." His speech was loudly applauded and the county was organized and named as he desired. The name may therefore be considered a borrowed one, an excellent example of what has been called "progressive pioneering." At the same time it is likely that the members of the 1818 legislature had in mind the Revolutionary War hero for whom the North Carolina and Kentucky counties had been named, General Benjamin Lincoln, who had died only a few years before. General Lincoln (1733-1810) of Massachusetts served with great herosim throughout the Revolution, he commanded at the unsuccessful seige of Savannah in 1799, and surrendered Charlestown to the British in 1780. He was a special friend of Washington, who deputized him to receive the sword of Cornwallis on his surrender to Yorktown, October 17, 1781. During Washington's first administration he was Secretary of War from 1781 to 1784 and supressed Shay's Rebellion in 1787. One of the twenty-two Lincoln Counties in as many different states, it is safe to say that all that came into existence before 1860 were probably named for General Benjamin Lincoln. (Eaton; Williams, STATE OF MISSOURI, 568-9; Williams N.E. MISSOURI I, 395-7; HIST. LINCOLN, 203)

Source: Harrison, Eugenia L. "Place Names Of Four River Counties In Eastern
 

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