Gentry County was first formed in 1841 and fully organized in 1845. It was named for Missouri Militia Major General Richard Gentry, a colonel of volunteers in the Florida War and hero of the Battle of Lake Okeechobee in 1837, where he was killed, and a roadside park in the county is dedicated to the memory of his wife, Ann Hawkins Gentry. The county was part of territory ceded in 1824 by the Iowa, Sac, and Fox tribes, and Indians roamed there into the 1830's. Its first settlers were Isaac Miller, Tobias Miller, William Martin, and John Roberts in 1834, and early pioneers came from Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee. Albany, the county seat, was laid out in 1845 by town commissioner Elisha Cameron and was briefly called Athens. A branch of the C. B. and Q. Railroad reached Albany in 1879, and a second branch was built to a point 2 miles west of town in 1881. Albany, the county's largest town, developed as a trading center and shipping point after the coming of the railroads. Early schools there were Northwest Missouri Methodist College, opened in 1891, Central Christian College in 1892, and Palmer Christian College in 1912. A livestock, grain, and blue grass seed producer, Gentry County comprises 488 square miles of rolling hills, glacial prairie, and river bottom land. In the county, the East, Middle, and West forks of the Grand unite to form one of Missouri's major rivers. Stanberry, the county's second largest town, was laid out by the Saint Louis Western Improvement Company in 1879, the year the Omaha Division of the Wabash Railroad was built in the county. The town, 12 miles from Albany, grew as a shipping point and railroad shops were established there in the 1880's. An early school there, the Northwest Normal School and Business Institute, opened in 1881. Other county towns included King City, laid out in 1869 on the C. B. and Q. and a blue grass seed center; McFall, established in 1879 on the Wabash; Darlington, established in 1879 on the C. B. and Q. and Wabash; and Gentry and Ford City, laid out in the 1880's on the C. B. and Q. Council Bluffs Trace, a post road opened by the U.S. Army in 1823 between Fort Atkinson, Nebraska, and Liberty, Missouri, ran through the county in a northerly direction. East of the Grand River ran Field's Trace, surveyed in 1818 by Gabrial Field along the route of an old Indian trail.