Glasgow was laid out in 1836 along scenic river bluffs where the Missouri forms a natural port and, named for pioneer James Glasgow, became the first successful town in this general area after earlier towns such as Chariton, Monticello, and Thorntonsburg failed. It grew into a major shipping point and by 1860 was the hub of central Missouri's flourishing tobacco trade, with the Glasgow to Huntsville plank road, finished in 1854, adding to its prosperity. During the Civil War, Confederates under Gen. J. B. Clark, Gen. J. O. Shelby, and Col. S. D. Jackman captured the town from Federals under Col. Chester Harding on Oct. 15, 1864, and the Methodist Church, built in 1849, was used as a hospital. In the postwar period, Glasgow benefited from the arrival of the Mo. and Miss. R. R. (Wabash) and the Chicago and Alton (G. M. & O.) in the 1870's. The Chicago and Alton built the first all-steel bridge in the world over the Missouri here for the railroad in 1879, with Gen. Wm. Sooy Smith as construction engineer; that bridge was replaced in 1900, and the highway bridge dates from 1925. A shipping point and trading town in the famed Boon's Lick Region on the west central boundary of Howard County, Glasgow also became an early educational center. In the early 1800's, pioneers from Tenn., Va., and Ky. made the first permanent settlements. Glasgow's first chartered school was a female academy in 1849. In 1866-67, the non-sectarian Pritchett Institute (College), named for first principal Carr W. Pritchett, was founded by tobacco merchant and Southern Methodist clergyman J. O. Swinney; the Morrison Observatory, given to the school in 1874 by Berenice Morrison-Fuller, once became well known, and astronomer H. S. Pritchett taught there before the school closed in 1922. Lewis College was founded there in 1867 under the Methodist Episcopal Church by the family of tobacco merchant Benjamin W. Lewis, including his brother James W., son Benj. W. Jr., and wife Eleanor Turner Lewis; local artist Cornelia A. Kuemmel taught at the college, whose last school year was 1892. Lewis Memorial Public Library was founded under the M. E. Church with a bequest from Benj. W. Lewis in 1866, and his family gave the building, now the oldest library building in Mo.