(660) 425-6424

Harrison County is one of nine counties forming the border between Missouri and Iowa.  Twenty-sixth in size of Missouri's 114 counties, and second largest on the border, it was organized in 1845, and names for Missouri Congressman, Albert G Harrison.  Now 720 square miles, it did not achieve its present size until the U.S. Supreme Court established the Missouri- Iowa boundary in 1851.

Bethany, the seat of justice, first called Dallas, was laid out in 1845, a the direction of John Allen, County Seat Commissioner, later member of the 1861 State Convention.  Bethany is prototrpe of the town in the famed novel. "The Story of a Country Town" by Edgar (Ed) w. Howe (1853-1937, founder of the Atchison, Kansas Globe.  His father Henry Howe, was the minister and editor in Bethany when Ed was a boy.

Union county in the war between the States, Harrison sent a number of federal troops.  The first  railroad a branch of the C.B. & Q., reached Bethany in 1880.  The town grew as a trading and shipping point.  Handsome fairgrounds there date from early 1900's.

A county of the Fertile Grand River basin, Harrison is a grain and livestock farming area.  In region was originally settled by Iowa, Sac and Fox tribes , 1824, the county was roamed by Indians into the 1840's.  The Great Indian Trail ran east to Northwest in the county.  Surveyed land was entered for sale 1842.

Early settler from Ohio, Illinois and other parts of Missouri and the east came in the late 1830's.  later a number or Bohemians settled in the county.  Among the count towns are Eagleville and Ridgeway once contestants for the county seat; Cainsville, once a coal mining town; Mt. Moriah; New Hampton; Martinsville; Gilman City; Blythedale; and Melbourne.

Union General Benjamin N. Prentiss practiced law in Bethany and there educator John R. Kirk (1851-1937) lived as a boy.  He and progressive education leader Eugene Fair (1877-1937, born in Gilman City, were both president of the Northeast Missouri State Teachers College.  Joseph H Burrows (1840-1918), who introduced  first bill (1881) to cut postage from 3 cents to 2 cents and named John J. Pershing for West Point appointment, was businessman and minister in Cainsville