Laclede was the boyhood home of John Joseph Pershing, who was born near Laclede in Linn County on September 13, 1860, while his parents, John Fletcher and Ann Elizabeth Thompson Pershing, lived in a cabin between Meadville and Laclede near his father's work as section boss on the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad then being built through the area. The family later moved to Laclede, where his father opened a general store. Pershing went on to command the American Expeditionary Force in Europe during World War I; after graduating from West Point in 1886, he had a brilliant career, was appointed to head the A. E. F. in 1917, and in 1919 became General of the Armies of the U. S., the only person ever to hold that rank. He died on July 15, 1948, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. The Pershing Boyhood Home in Laclede and Pershing State Park west of Laclede are state memorials; the park, comprising 1,836 acres of woodland through which Locust Creek flows, was established in 1938 and dedicated in 1948. Laclede itself, named for the founder of St. Louis, was laid out in 1853 by J.E. Worlow and became one of several Linn County towns on the Hannibal and St. Joseph, later the Burlington, the first railroad to cross Missouri, completed in 1859. North of Laclede is Linneus, the Linn County seat, settled in 1834 by John Holland and named for the Swedish botanist Linnaeus. Linn County, organized in 1837 and named for Lewis F. Linn, the "Model Senator from Missouri" from 1833 to 1843, was a rich farming area that was once heavily mined for coal, and its real growth followed the 1847 chartering of the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad. Other towns on the line included Bucklin, laid out in 1854, Meadville in 1860, and Brookfield in 1859, all named for railroad employees. During the Civil War, raids were directed against the railroad, which was held by the Union. To the southeast, on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, Marceline was laid out in 1887 and named for the wife of a railroad official; Walter E. Disney lived nearby there as a young boy.