Lamar is distinguished as the birthplace of Harry S. Truman, the 33rd President of the United States, who was born there on May 8, 1884, to John Anderson Truman and Martha Ellen (Young) Truman. The family moved to Harrisonville in Cass County in 1886, and from there to Grandview and Independence in Jackson County. In his national career, Truman served as U.S. Senator from Missouri from 1935 to 1945, U.S. Vice President in 1945, and President from 1945 to 1953. Highlights of his administration include the end of World War II, ratification of the United Nations Charter, establishment of the Atomic Energy Commission, unification of the Armed Services, and police action through the United Nations in Korea; his philosophy of government, the welfare of all, was called the Fair Deal. Lamar was laid out in 1856-57 as the seat of Barton County and was named for Republic of Texas President Mirabeau B. Lamar; the town was founded by George Ward on land he gave the county. Barton County, organized in 1855, was named for Missouri U.S. Senator David Barton. On the horseshoe bend of the north fork of Spring River in the Prairie Region of southwest Missouri, 980 feet above sea level, Lamar serves as the seat of a leading coal mining and grain and livestock farming county. Osage Indians gave up claims to the area in their 1808 and 1825 land cessions. During the Missouri-Kansas Border War from 1854 to 1859, lawless bands ranged the county, and in the Civil War terror and disorder characterized the region. Quantrill and his guerrilla band raided and burned Lamar, then occupied by Union troops, on November 5 and 11, 1862, and raiders burned the town again on May 28, 1864. Almost depopulated at the war's close, Lamar and Barton County slowly recovered. In 1880 the Kansas City, Fort Scott, and Gulf Railroad, later Frisco, reached Lamar, and the Missouri Pacific arrived in 1881. Lamar College opened in 1889 and closed in the early 1900s. Arthur Aull, widely known for his unusual news policy, became editor of the Lamar Democrat in 1900. Northwest is Liberal, founded in 1880 by G. H. Walser and once a community of free-thinkers, and to the southwest is Mindenmines, a shipping point for coal founded in 1883.