The American Cyclopædia (1879)/Springfield (Missouri)

SPRINGFIELD, a town and the county seat of Greene co., Missouri, on Wilson creek and the Atlantic and Pacific railroad, 195 m. in direct line S. W. of St. Louis; pop. in 1870, 5,555, of whom 1,090 were colored; in 1875, about 8,000. It is on a table land 1,500 ft. higher than St. Louis. Its trade and manufactures are important. The principal establishments are four flouring mills, two planing mills, a cotton mill, a woollen mill, a carriage factory, two iron establishments, two wagon factories, and the railroad shops. There are two hotels, two national banks, good public schools, a daily and four weekly newspapers, and 13 churches. It is the seat of Drury college (Congregational), founded in 1873.—Springfield was known as an Indian trading post and frontier village as early as 1820. It was incorporated in 1830. Its prosperity dates from the close of the civil war. In the autumn of 1861 and the early part of 1862 it was alternately in the possession of the federal and the confederate forces; and several fights occurred in the town and its vicinity, in one of which (Aug. 10, 1861) the federal general Nathaniel Lyon was defeated and killed.