Fayette

The astronomer the plaque says was born here went on to run national institutions. Henry Smith Pritchett, born in Fayette on April 16, 1857, son of the astronomer Carr Waller Pritchett, graduated from Pritchett College in Glasgow in 1875. He taught astronomy at Washington University, headed the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey from 1897 to 1900, and then became president of MIT. From 1906 to 1930 he led the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, writing the foreword to the 1910 Flexner Report and overseeing the pension plan that became TIAA.

What the plaque says

Fayette Fayette is the county seat of Howard, "Mother of Counties," and first county in the Boon's Lick Country. Named for Benjamin Howard, first Missouri Territory governor, and organized, 1816, the county contained so vast an area that from it have come some 29 Missouri counties and parts of 9 others. Southwest in this county Daniel Boone's sons worked a salt lick about 1807. Fayette was laid out in 1823 to replace Franklin as county seat, when Franklin had to be abandoned to the encroaching Missouri River. The town is named for the Marquis de Lafayette. Rapid growth and early wealth made the town a cultural and political center. Today's noted Central College traces its beginning to the pioneer coeducational Howard High School, 1844. Outgrowths of this school were the Methodist Central (male) College, authorized, 1853, chartered, 1855, and Howard Female College (Howard-Payne), chartered, 1859. Under Bishop W. F. McMurry, 4 church schools united with Central, 1925, to make it the only Methodist college in Missouri. The school maintains a museum. (See other side) Erected by State Historical Society of Missouri and State Highway Commission, 1955 Fayette (Continued from other side) Fayette, centered in a fertile Missouri River county, is surrounded by fine grain and livestock farms. Benjamin Cooper made the county's first permanent settlement in 1810. Two years later Cooper had one of several defensive forts against the Indians in the War of 1812. Iowa, Sac, and Fox tribes ceded their claims to this area in 1824. Settled largely by Southerners, Howard County and Fayette lie in Missouri's Little Dixie Region. In the Civil War, Fayette did not see much action but progress came to a halt. It was not until after the coming of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, 1873, that the town enjoyed renewed growth. In the pre-Civil War period, Fayette was the center of a powerful political clique, and here for a time lived governors John Miller, 1826-32; Thomas Reynolds, 1840-44; Sterling Price, 1853-57; and Claiborne F. Jackson, 1861. Pioneer lawyers John B. Clark and Abiel Leonard, State Supreme Court judge, also lived here, and here were born Episcopal Bishops Ethelbert Talbot and Abiel Leonard (Jr.); Methodist Bishop E. R. Hendrix; and astronomer Henry S. Pritchett. Erected by State Historical Society of Missouri and State Highway Commission, 1955

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Boone's Lick State Historic Site — 11 mi
  The salt spring in the Howard County woods that Daniel Boone's sons worked from 1805, whose name spread to a road, a country and the first American settlement of central Missouri.
• Katy Trail State Park — 13 mi
  Two hundred forty miles of the old Missouri-Kansas-Texas rail bed between Machens and Clinton, mostly along the Missouri River, first opened in 1990 at Rocheport, where it runs through the railroad's stone tunnel.
• Arrow Rock State Historic Site — 15 mi
  A Boonslick river town of more than 1,000 that the river and railroads left behind, built and worked by enslaved people, now a village of fifty and a National Historic Landmark.
• Rock Bridge Memorial State Park — 27 mi
  Karst on the edge of Columbia: a boardwalk through a natural rock tunnel to the Devil's Icebox sinkholes, over a cave that is the only known home of the pink planarian.

More markers nearby

• Glasgow — 9.9 mi
• Boonville/Franklin — 12 mi
• Boonville — 13 mi
• Arrow Rock — 15 mi