Worth County, the last of Missouri's 114 counties to be formed, was organized in Feb., 1861, 6 months and 39 years after Missouri was admitted into the Union in Aug., 1821, with 25 counties. Encompassing 267 sq. miles of glacial prairie, it is the state's smallest county, and it was named for New York General William Jenkins Worth, who served in the Florida and Mexican wars. The county was first settled by Henry Lott in 1840, and early settlers came largely from Ky., Tenn., Ind., Ill., Ia., Ohio, and other parts of Mo. In territory ceded by the Iowa, Sac, and Fox tribes in 1824, Indians roamed into the 1850's. What is now Worth County formed Missouri's extreme northwestern corner until the annexation of the Platte Indian Purchase Territory in 1837, and as an Iowa border county it lies on the boundary marked in 1851 by order of the United States Supreme Court to settle the 1839 Missouri-Iowa boundary dispute. The county seat was first located in Smithton, a village named for Eli Smith, near the present seat of justice, but in 1864 the county seat was moved to Grant City, laid out in 1863 on land donated by Isaac Miller and G. W. Frakes and named for Gen. U. S. Grant. Worth was a strong Union county during the Civil War, and Grant City grew as a shipping point after a branch of the C. B. & Q. Railroad reached it in 1880. Through this fertile grain and livestock farming area flow the Platte and the three main forks of the Grand River. Mineral springs at Denver, platted in 1849, and Allendale, in 1855, were used as health spas in the 1880's. Other communities include Oxford, laid out in 1856; Isadora, 1864; Irena, 1882; Worth, 1899; and Sheridan, founded when the Chicago, Great Western R.R. was built through the western part of the county in 1887. Points of interest include the grave in Grant City Cemetery of Leonard J. Farwell, Gov. of Wis. from 1852 to 1854, and the G.A.R. Monument there, created by Dell Eighmy, who also painted the murals in the dome of the 1898 county courthouse.