While browsing through the microfilm….. Springfield Advertiser, Saturday, 5 Jul 1845: [Note: this appeared in newspaper issues from at least May 31st through July 5th. The site chosen for the county seat was located just north of the original town of Mount Vernon. See Goodspeed History.] Sale of Town lots in the Town of MOUNT VERNON Seat of Justice of Lawrence county, Missouri The undersigned, commissioner of the seat of justice of Lawrence county, in obedience to an order of the county court of said count, will sell the town lots in said town on Monday the 7th day of July, 1845. Mount Vernon is located on a high and healthy piece of table land, convenient to never failing springs, surrounded by a large body of good timber and farming land--within two miles of a saw mill and three of a grist mill. Lawrence county is justly considered one of the best counties of land in southwestern Missouri. It is thickly inhabited, and capable of a much more dense population than most counties of the same size in the State. It is within eighty miles of Oceola [sic] on the Osage river, and forty miles of the mouth of Centre creek, which is considered the head of navigation for Grand river. To merchants, mechanics and professional men, Mount Vernon is inviting, as the farmers are not only able but willing to pay those to whom they are indebted. Usual terms of sale, which will be made known on the day of sale. Wade Hampton Stroud, Commissioner May 24, 1845 - 3t. I’d like to expand on one particular phrase in the above notice of town lot sales; i.e., “within eighty miles of Oceola [sic] on the Osage river, and forty miles of the mouth of Centre creek, which is considered the head of navigation for Grand river”. 1. This fascinates me because when Jean Baptiste Benard de La Harpe left New Orleans on his 1722 expedition up the Arkansas river he was supposed to be searching for an possible overland route from St. Louis to the Gulf Coast of Texas. There was some healthy competition going on between the Spanish and the French for dominance in Texas and the Spanish had the upper hand. La Harpe was considered to be a very minor player among explorers of the day. In fact, the French government was so disappointed with his exploration and reports that this, if I remember correctly, was his final expedition. He retired to France and never returned. The fact that La Harpe’s peers as well as modern day historians far more qualified than I feel that his work is questionable, provides me the impetus to do the same. I believe there is a distinct possibility that La Harpe traveled up the Arkansas river to (now) Fort Gibson, where the Grand flows into the Arkansas. He then traveled up the Grand to (take your pick -- Centre creek or Spring river.) Either way, he would have been heading into present day Jasper county, Missouri and toward Lawrence county. Most historians believe that his exploration ended in northeastern Oklahoma. But at the point in his journal where he states they left their boats and traveled overland in an attempt to replenish their supplies, I believe they were possibly in Jasper county. I also think that he had run across an ancient and worn Native American trail, later the St. Louis - Sarcoxie road, then the “Mother Road”, Route 66, and now Hwy 96 (Historic 66). I think La Harpe was right on the money as far as the goal of the expedition was concerned, but he didn’t know it. According to his journal, they searched for provisions with little success and returned to the boats. At this time he also notes in the journal that they had suffered one death in the party. I copied a translation of La Harpe’s journal but lost my copy in a fire. I do not remember the name of the deceased, but I do remember that he was a slave, born in Jamaica, and loaned to La Harpe for this expedition. It was this man, an enslaved Jamaican explorer, who was buried on the prairie in Lawrence county. The stone found by P. P. Misemer in 1901 on his land near the current intersection of Hwy M and Hwy 96 had only the dates 1697 and 1722 carved on it. I have no proof of that -- but I like the story. 2. The Osage river was considered a primary outlet for exports from Southwest Missouri during the time of early settlement, but was considered unreliable as noted in the following from the Advertiser of 19 July 1845. “The last number of the ‘Saturday Morning visitor,’ published at Warsaw contains an article, written with vigor, and displaying considerable command of language………. What a picture of humiliation, degradation and disgrace, is here presented!…… The most nervous descriptions of the manufacturing districts of England, the down trodden tenants of Ireland, or the land-bound serfs of Russia, does not convey a stronger idea of insupportable suffering, without prospect of mitigation, or hope of relief, than that here offered as the likeness of ourselves……..But that ‘in every corner misery is daily witnessed in the care worn countenance of the farmer, and the wretchedness of his family,’ that ‘the end of the year finds him poorer than the beginning,’ that the great evil we have to encounter is crushing, and will continue to crush our energies, and entail poverty on ourselves and posterity, is false; absolutely, palpably, false. The people of several counties in the south west have other outlets for their produce than the Osage. With an unbounded range, mild winters, and climate free from all virulent diseases among stock, they look upon the horse, mule, cattle and sheep raising business as a safe and profitable one. With a thoroughfare within forty miles of this town, which is capable, in its present condition, of conveying all their surplus to New Orleans at a cost of less than twenty five cents per hundred, they do not expect much benefit from an overland transportation of eighty miles, to a stream as uncertain as the Osage…..” On the same page I find: “……..Help then would be doubly grateful to them. In the uplands, the prospect is fair for bountiful crops. Should we not help our neighbors in their distress? Let us encourage them. The Osage bottom lands should not be abandoned. They may be our Egypt yet. The floods have swept off the present corps [crops], but they prepare the lands for a greater yield in future. Meetings should be held everywhere along the Osage for the purpose. Liberal contributions should be made to the sufferers. We should help them through to the next year. Many of them cannot abandon the bottoms. They ought not, but they should move their houses to the hills. While it is pleasant to cultivate the low lands, it is more so to live upon the high lands.” Due to the flooding that year on the Osage, Lawrence County Commissioner Stroud and the county court thought it advisable to note that Lawrence county had a viable alternative to the Osage for exports.