Monroe County Article written by Thomas V. Bodine, Paris

Monroe county was cut off from what was then Ralls county in 1831 and Hancock S. Jackson, of Randolph, Stephen Glascock, of Ralls, and Joseph Holliday, of Pike—who afterwards moved to the county, where he died—were appointed commissioners to select the county seat. The new county was named for President James Monroe, which indicates clearly the political complexion of its settlers, which, with a Whig victory occasionally in the forties, has ever since been maintained.

As early as 1817 parties came into what was then Pike county and laid out tracts of land near Middle Grove, but no permanent settlements were made in what is now Monroe county until 1820, when Ezra Fox, Andrew and Daniel Wittenberg and others located three miles east of what is now Middle Grove and began that historic community. About the same time a settlement was formed by Joseph and Alexander Smith and others between the North and Middle forks of Salt river close to Florida, being known as the Smith settlement, another by the Mc Gees south of Paris, and others by Daniel Urbin east of Madison, near old Clinton by Robert Martin and Caleb Woods, and by Robert Greening and Samuel Nesbit at Florida following. As early as 1820. Benjamin Young settled on South Fork near Santa Fe and remained there until 1828, only eight families residing in this, one of the richest sections of Missouri, when the county was organized. A colony of Virginians joined these, extending along the river from Lick Creek in Ralls past Florida, mild as elsewhere in the county the names found there today are much the same as those of the first settlers. The Kentuckians invariably settled in the timber, near springs or along water courses, leaving the prairie wild.

    Paris was laid out in 1831 and was named by Mrs. Cephas Fox of the Grove settlement, wife of the famous pioneer merchant and philanthropist by that name, for her native town, Paris, Kentucky. Trading places were few for ten years. The first blacksmith shop in the county was opened on the Louisiana road south of Paris by Charles Eales and the first store was opened up by Major Penn, afterwards county clerk and enshrined in tradition by reason of his connection with the Clemens family, at Florida. The town of Florida was laid out in the winter of 1831, by Robert Donaldson, John Witt, Dr. Rennan, Joseph Grigsby, W. N. Penn and Hugh Hickman, and here three years after transpired an event of historical importance to the whole nation and by far the biggest event in the history of Monroe county—the birth of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known to the literary world as Mark Twain, of whom more hereafter. The first mill in the county was built by Benjamin Bradley two miles northeast of Florida and along with the Hickman mill at the same place, both operated by water power, became famous throughout this section of Missouri, people coming forty miles with grain. The first road laid out in the county was ‘‘the old London trace,” and ran from Middle Grove to New London, being surveyed by J. C. Fox and others on order from the county court of Ralls county. The houses were all of log and seldom had glass.