Jefferson County, organized in 1818 as the eighth county formed in Missouri, lies in the southeast Lead Belt in a region of the state's oldest settlements. Probably the first American settlement in Missouri was made in this county near the mouth of the Meramec about 1770 by the Hildebrands, Germans from Penn. De Gamache ran the first ferry in Mo. nearby in the 1770's. Herculaneum, on the Mississippi, the first town in the county and its first county seat, was founded by Moses Austin and Samuel Hammond in 1809 as a lead depot for the mines at Potosi, and shot towers built on the Mississippi bluffs supplied shot to troops in the War of 1812. In 1839, centrally located Hillsboro became county seat and Herculaneum languished, but in the 1890's the St. Joseph Lead Co. smelter, built on the original townsite, brought renewed growth. Herculaneum was the birthplace of Thomas C. Fletcher, the first native-born governor of Missouri, who served from 1865 to 1869, and of the noted chemist Campbell Morfit; Daniel Dunklin, the fifth governor of Missouri, is buried in the family plot at nearby Riverside. A spur of the Ozark Highland runs into Jefferson County at Missouri's Mississippi River boundary. Many ancient Indian mounds are found in the area, and near Kimmswick is the site of a noted bed of prehistoric animal bones. Osage Indians, who gave up this region in 1808, greatly harassed the early settlers. Grain and stock farming and industries associated with county resources brought rapid settlement, with many settlers coming from the South and later from Germany. In 1857 Thomas C. Fletcher and L.J. Rankin laid out De Soto, and the St. Louis, Iron Mountain, and Southern R.R., now Missouri Pacific, opened repair shops there in 1872. Phenomenal silica deposits brought a plate glass industry and the towns of Crystal City and Festus in the 1870's, and this industry is now one of the largest plants of the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. Places of interest in the county include Maclot's shot towersite at Herculaneum, the Thomas C. Fletcher House at Hillsboro, Grace Presbyterian Church at Crystal City, and the route of the 1789 El Camino Real, Sp. King's Highway, at Kimmswick.