Stoddard County, the largest of Missouri's six southeast lowland counties, encompasses 837 square miles. Organized in 1835, it was named for Maj. Amos Stoddard, first American civil governor of Upper Louisiana. After the 1808 Osage Indian land cession, Delaware and Shawnee Indians used the county in the early 1800's, and southern pioneers began settling the area about 1817. Bloomfield, the county seat, was laid out in 1835 near the site of a Delaware and Shawnee village on 50 acres given by Absalom Bailey. During the Civil War, Bloomfield was a Union post, and at its newspaper plant a company of Illinois volunteers printed a soldier's newspaper titled "Stars and Stripes" on Nov. 9, 1861. The town was burned in a Confederate raid by Gen. John S. Marmaduke's troops in Sept., 1864, and throughout the war Bloomfield and the county endured heavy troop activity and many guerrilla raids that halted growth. In the postwar years, modern development came as vast timber resources were harvested, railroads were built, towns were founded, and swamp land was reclaimed. A fertile farming county producing cotton, grain, soybeans, cattle, and poultry, Stoddard lies east of the St. Francis River and west of the old channel of the Whitewater. St. Francis River drainage began in 1893, and the county is also in the Little River Drainage District, established in 1905. Crowley's Ridge, a remnant of an ancient costal plain, is in the county. Dexter, the county's largest town, on what are now Mo. Pac. and St. Louis Southwestern railroads, was laid out in 1873, and two terms of court were held there yearly from 1896 to 1898. Essex, also on the Mo. Pac., was laid out when it was built in 1873, and Dudley was a sawmill camp by 1890. Advance and Puxico are on the Frisco route, built in 1884, while Bernie and Bell City date from the 1890's when the St. L. SW. R.R. was built. Other communities include Charter Oak, Brownwood, Grayridge, Powe, Leora, Kinder, Idalia, Baker, and Painton. In the northeast are the scenic Lost Hills rising high above the Castor River drainage area. The Natchitoches Trail, an ancient Indian path to the southwest, and a Shawnee trail to the south ran through the county, and many prehistoric mounds remain there.