Founded in 1832 by Englishman James Keyte, Keytesville became the judicial seat of Chariton County in 1833 after Keyte donated 50 acres for the site. The county’s first seat had been Old Chariton, laid out in 1817 near the mouth of the Chariton River by editor and politician Duff Green, and it grew rapidly before floods led to its abandonment. The county name probably came from fur trader Joseph Charette, who drowned in what is now the Chariton River in 1795. When the Lewis and Clark Expedition noted the river in 1804, it had two outlets, and since 1904 its 300 miles of curving channel through the county has been straightened to 33 miles. Union troops stationed at Keytesville surrendered to Confederates under John Thrailkill on Sept. 20, 1864, and the courthouse was burned. Sterling Price, Missouri governor from 1853 to 1857 and later a Confederate general, lived near Keytesville, and the state statue to him by A.G. Newman stands there in Price Park. Keytesville serves a rich grain-farming county in the Boon’s Lick Region, where southern pioneers arriving after the War of 1812 introduced tobacco and made the county a production leader into the 1900s. The county lies in territory ceded by Iowa, Sac, and Fox Indians in 1824, and brief hostilities broke out in 1827 between settlers and a band of Iowas led by Big Neck. The Indian Trail, later called Field’s Trace, followed the Missouri through the county. James Keyte also founded Brunswick in 1836 on the Missouri, where it became a prominent river port before the coming of the railroad, and to the east Salisbury was laid out in 1867 by Lucius Salisbury. Among people associated with these places were Lisbon Applegate, a member of the 1845 Missouri Constitutional Convention; W.W. Rucker, a congressman from 1899 to 1923; General Maxwell D. Taylor, born in Keytesville and appointed Chief of Staff in 1955; John C. Collet of Salisbury, later a federal judge; Roy McKittrick of Salisbury, Missouri attorney general from 1933 to 1945; and actor Sol. S. Russell, born in Brunswick.