Mercer County, in Missouri's north central glacial plains along the middle of the Missouri-Iowa boundary, was organized in 1845 in territory ceded by the Iowa, Sac, and Fox tribes in 1824, and Indians hunted there into the 1840's. Its first settler, James Parsons, came in 1837 to what is now Princeton, and early settlers arrived from Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, and Illinois. Princeton, the county seat, was laid out in 1846 on high ground overlooking the Weldon River Valley and was named for the 1777 Battle of Princeton, where General Hugh Mercer lost his life; the county itself was named for him. With the coming of the Chicago, Rock Is. and Pac. R.R. in 1871, Princeton grew as a shipping and trading point, though from 1871 to 1911 it suffered a number of damaging fires, with one side of the square burning five times. Calamity Jane, born Martha Jane Canary near Princeton about 1852, was a colorful figure of the western frontier who claimed to have been a pony-express rider and scout with General George Custer; she died in 1903 and was buried by Wild Bill Hickok in Deadwood, South Dakota, and Calamity Jane Roadside Park near Princeton was named for her. Mercer County became a rich grain and livestock farming area, well watered by tributaries of the Grand River. In 1894 a border dispute with Decatur County, Iowa, centered in Lineville, arose because the 1851 boundary markers placed by order of the U.S. Supreme Court had been obliterated; in 1897 a U.S. Supreme Court Commission re-marked the disputed area, and Mercer County won most of its claims. A strong Union county in the War Between the States, Mercer saw little activity. Its towns include Ravanna, laid out in 1857; Modena, laid out in 1858; and Mercer, laid out in 1871, settled in 1859, and first called Marion. In Princeton, the Hyde family home, now Axtell Hospital, was the residence of Ira B. Hyde, a member of the 43rd Congress, and the birthplace of his sons Arthur M. Hyde, who served as Mayor of Princeton, Governor of Missouri, and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, and Lawrence M. Hyde, who was elected to his first term as a Missouri Supreme Court Judge in 1942.