Cass County

The musician in the plaque's last line orchestrated much of Broadway's golden age. Robert Russell Bennett, born in Kansas City on June 15, 1894, came to a farm at Freeman at four to recover from polio and graduated as valedictorian of Freeman High School. He orchestrated Show Boat in 1927 and Oklahoma! in 1943, then South Pacific, My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music, and won an Oscar for the film of Oklahoma! For television he set Richard Rodgers's themes for Victory at Sea, more than eleven hours of score. He died in Manhattan in 1981.

What the plaque says

Cass County Midway on Missouri's western border, Cass County was organized in 1835 and named Van Buren. The Free-Soil Party affiliation of Martin Van Buren led to name change, 1849, for Democrat Lewis Cass. In territory ceded by Osage tribes 1825, the county was first settled 1828, by David Creek. Early pioneers were mainly from Ky., Tenn., Va. Harrisonville, the county seat, was laid out 1837, and named for Albert G. Harrison, Mo. Congressman. The 1897 courthouse is the county's third. Pleasant Hill, the second town founded, was laid out 1844 near store opened by "Blois," a French Canadian, 1833. Torn by strife in the 1854-59 Mo.-Kan. Border War, Cass was one of the counties named in Union Gen. Thomas Ewing's Order No. 11. Issued Aug. 25, 1863, to curb guerrilla warfare, it forced people from their homes except in or near Union-held Pleasant Hill and Harrisonville. Near Freeman is site of the "Battle of Morristown," where about 500 men under Union Colonel H. P. Johnson, who was killed, routed some 100 State Guards led by Col. H. I. Irvin, Sept., 1861. Resettlement brought the county a 19,296 pop. by 1870. (See other side) Erected by State Historical Society of Missouri and State Highway Commission, 1959 Cass County (Continued from other side) County of handsome livestock and grain farms, Cass is in Missouri's Western Prairie Region. During 1865-1904, the Mo. Pac.; M.K.T.; K.C. So.; C.R.I. & Pac.; Frisco; K.C., Clinton & Spfd. railroads were built in the county and many towns laid out. Pleasant Hill and Harrisonville grew as shipping points. In 1872 the county was victimized by a county court railroad bond swindle. Two of the guilty officials, out on bond, and a friend, attempting to leave, were killed by a mob which boarded their train at Gunn City. No one was ever punished. It took some 50 years to pay the bond debt. At Belton is buried temperance agitator Carry (Moore) Nation (1846-1911). Her grave marker states "She hath done what she could." In Pleasant Hill post office is Tom Lea's mural "Back Home April, 1865." Buried in cemetery there are Confed. Gen. Hiram S. Bledsoe and Caroline Abbott Stanley, the author of novel "Order No. 11," and there lived Mo. geologist Garland Carr Broadhead (1827-1912) and political scientist James A. Smith (1860-1924). Musician Robert Russell Bennett lived near Freeman as a youth.

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• Shawnee Friends Mission — 31 mi