Chillicothe was laid out in 1837 on rolling land above the Grand between Thompson River and Medicine Creek as the seat of newly organized Livingston County. The county was named for Edward Livingston, U. S. Secretary of State, and the town took its name from Chillicothe, Ohio, a Shawnee tribal name. It grew rapidly after the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad was completed in 1859, and three miles east of town the final spike was driven for this first railroad across Missouri. Because of the railroad, Union troops occupied the town during the Civil War and the area suffered guerrilla raids. Growth revived with construction of what is now the Wabash in 1870 and the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul in 1886. Chillicothe was home to Chillicothe Business College, once the nation’s largest business school, founded in 1890 by Allen Moore and closed in 1952; Saint Joseph’s Academy dates from 1872, and the State Industrial Home for Girls from 1887. At nearby Avalon, United Brethren operated Avalon College from 1873 to 1890, and its college building later became a church. The city, with varied industries, stands in a livestock and grain farming county in Missouri’s Glacial Plains Region. The county lay in territory ceded in 1824 by the Iowa, Sac, and Fox tribes; its first white settler was Samuel E. Todd in 1831, and many pioneers, largely from the South, arrived in the 1830s. Prehistoric Indian mounds and campsites remain in the county, and an Indian trail later called Field’s Trace crossed the Grand River west of Chillicothe. Early French trappers called the river Le Riviere Grande, and in 1839 the state made it a free highway, allowing several steamboats to travel as far as Utica, about 6 miles southwest. Chillicothe was the home of Confederate General William Y. Slack, and Alexander M. Dockery, Governor of Missouri from 1901 to 1905, practiced medicine there. Dockery is buried in Edgewood Cemetery, where Nelson Kneass, composer of the music for T. D. English’s poem "Ben Bolt," is also buried after dying there in 1868 while on a theatrical tour. Earl S. and Foreman Sloan are said to have developed their liniment while running a livery stable there from 1870 to 1872, and Arthur J. and Alta T. Simpson gave land for the city park.