Osage County, named for the river on its west border, was organized in 1841, and its centrally located seat of justice was established the next year as Linnville, later Linn, for Lewis F. Linn, with J.W. Robinson giving land for the site. The area was first settled by French Canadians around 1805, before the Osage, the French name for the Wazhazhe Indians, ceded claims to the region in 1808, and their settlement, French Village, stood near the confluence of the Osage and Missouri rivers. American pioneers were present by 1820, and large German immigration came in the 1830s and 1840s. Westphalia, founded by Westphalians in 1835 on a hill above Maries Creek, was the county's first German settlement and was partially laid out in 1838 by Father Helias, a Jesuit missionary to central Missouri who had headquarters there for a time. Saint Joseph's Catholic Church in Westphalia was built in 1848. By 1845 two more German Catholic settlements had been established, at Rich Fountain by Bavarians and at Loose Creek by Rhinelanders. In the Ozark foothills, the county includes fine valley farms, high wooded bluffs, and the rugged plateau between the Osage and Gasconade rivers, with grain, poultry, and dairy farming as well as timber, clay, and limestone resources. By 1855 the Pacific Railroad, Missouri Pacific, ran along the Missouri River in northern Osage County. Along that route, Bonnots Mill, first called Dauphine, was laid out by Felix Bonnot in 1852 near the site of old French Village, and Chamois, first settled in 1818, was named by Morgan Harbor and laid out by J.M. Shobe in 1856. Other towns founded in the mid-1800s were Cooper Hill, Hope, and Koeltztown. On the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific line, built in 1904 in southern Osage County, were Freeburg, Argyle, and Meta, while Folk and Freedom date from the late 1800s. The history of German Catholic settlement in the county appears in Father Helias's manuscripts in the Archives of Saint Louis Archdiocese, and Nicholas Hesse, who lived in Westphalia from 1835 to 1837, wrote of the pioneer period in his book "Western North America."