Jefferson City, the capital of Missouri, was officially named the City of Jefferson in honor of the third U.S. President and was built on a site chosen in 1821 by the First General Assembly for the seat of government. Saint Charles served as the temporary capital until 1826 while the new town was established. The first statehouse there burned in 1837 and the second in 1911, while the present capitol, completed in 1917, was built of native Carthage marble and became known for its paintings, sculpture, murals, Resources Museum, Soldiers and Sailors Hall, legislative chambers, and murals by Benton and Brangwyn that highlight Missouri's historic role as a frontier, western gateway, agricultural, and industrial state. In 1829 the city became the seat of Cole County, organized in 1820 and named for pioneer Stephen Cole. The State Penitentiary was located there in 1833, the Missouri Pacific Railroad reached the city in 1855, and a bridge crossed the Missouri River there in 1896. Lincoln University, later state supported, was chartered there in 1866 as an institute for Negroes. In the Ozark foothills near the state's center, the capital was settled mainly by Southerners and later Germans on land ceded to the U.S. by the Osage Indians in 1808. During the Civil War, delegates elected to a state convention in February 1861 to decide Missouri's status in the Union deposed the pro-Southern state officers who had left when Union troops approached in June 1861, and the convention's provisional government kept Missouri in the Union. The state seal was adopted in 1822, using symbols including the crescent for Missouri as the second state formed from the Louisiana Purchase, a bear for courage and resources, the U.S. coat of arms for union, a helmet for strength, and a large star for Missouri as the twenty-fourth state, under the motto, "Let the welfare of the people be the supreme law."