Neosho, named from the Osage word Ni-u-zhu meaning Main River, was settled about 1833 near three large springs and became the seat of Newton County in 1839. On the Ozark tableland prairies, called an “Eden of Fertility,” settlers from many states and countries made their homes. In this county, also rich in minerals, Granby eight miles east became south Missouri's oldest lead and zinc mining town; the discovery of lead in the early 1850's brought thousands of miners and speculators in a “Granby Stampede,” and Granby lead was used for Confederate bullets before the furnaces were wrecked in 1862. Newtonia, twelve miles east on Oliver’s Prairie, was the county’s first settled area in 1829 and was devastated by Civil War engagements in 1862 and 1864, while nearby the Hugh Shannon Homestead of 1829 preserves one of the first pioneer homes in southwest Missouri. Near Diamond, twelve miles north on Diamond Grove Prairie, was the birthplace of George Washington Carver, born circa 1861, and the site became a national monument. Neosho became the Confederate capital of Missouri when deposed Governor Claiborne F. Jackson and the rebel legislature met there in October 1861, but although they passed an act ratifying the Constitution of the Confederate States and an Ordinance of Secession, the State Convention that had deposed Jackson kept Missouri in the Union; the approach of Federal forces led to the legislature’s removal to nearby Cassville in Barry County and adjournment in November 1861, and later Marshall, Texas, served as Confederate capital of Missouri. Throughout the war, skirmishes, raids, and guerrilla warfare swept the area and inflicted a reign of terror on the people, and in 1863 Union troops were driven from Neosho by General Joseph O. Shelby’s Confederates. Near Neosho, where fruit crops predominate, the Swiss Herman Jaeger developed from wild Ozark vines a grape resistant to grape louse, and Neosho was also the birthplace of artist Thomas Hart Benton.