Andrew County, organized in 1841, was one of six counties in the Indian Platte Purchase Territory annexed to Missouri in 1837 and was named for Andrew Jackson Davis, a St. Louis editor. First settled in the middle 1830s by pioneers from Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and other parts of Missouri, it established Savannah as county seat in 1841; the town was first briefly called Union, then renamed for Savannah, Georgia. The Platte Co. R. R. (C. B. & Q.) reached Savannah in 1860, and today’s Chicago, Great Western arrived in the late 1880s, helping the town grow in the post-Civil War years as a shipping point and trading center. During the Civil War, Andrew County was divided and sent troops to both sides. In August 1861, about 1500 men from Andrew and other counties joined the pro-Southern Missouri State Guard at Camp Highly in eastern Andrew County, while others joined a large Union camp in adjacent Gentry County. In 1861, Union troops seized the Northwest Democrat, a pro-Southern newspaper in Savannah, and troops from Camp Highly seized the Plain Dealer, a Union newspaper. Raiding guerrilla bands overran the county through 1863. The county’s glacial plains support fertile livestock, grain, and fruit farms, and its waters include the One Hundred and Two and Platte rivers, while the Nodaway and Missouri form its west border. In 1804, the Lewis and Clark Expedition camped on an island at the mouth of the Nodaway, and members of Wilson P. Hunt’s 1811 Astorian expedition wintered near the river’s mouth. Among the county’s towns are Amazonia, once on the Missouri River but now inland, laid out in 1857 near the site of Nodaway City, an early river port; Fillmore, 1845; Whitesville, 1848; Rochester, 1848; Bolckow, 1868; Rosendale, 1869; Rea, 1877; Helena, 1878; and Cosby, 1882. Andrew County was the birthplace of Nellie Tayloe Ross, first governor of Wyoming from 1925 to 1927 and first Woman Director of the U.S. Mint; Joseph K. Toole, first governor of Montana; W. Elmer Holt, governor of Montana in 1935; Edwin W. Toole, a noted Montana lawyer; and Eugene W. Caldwell, a noted roentgenologist. Savannah was also home to John P. Altgeld, governor of Illinois from 1893 to 1897; Henry S. Kelly, a legal textbook writer; and James P. Somerville, one of the founders of Sertoma Clubs International.