City of Jefferson history

Created to Serve as CapitalJefferson City holds the distinction of having been created specifically to serve as the state capital by a commission appointed by the Missouri state legislature in 1821.

For several years, other towns attempted to have the capital city changed, and in 1832 Governor John Miller suggested that a state penitentiary be built in Jefferson City to strengthen the town's position as capital.

Doctor Crawford W. Long performed the first surgery using ether as an anesthetic, in Jefferson on March 30, 1842.

The city’s grand hotel, The Excelsior has been and remains in continuous operation since its opening in 1850 and the second oldest in Texas to be in uninterrupted service.

Conser built his ferry over the Santiam in 1851.

Jacob Conser built the Conser House in 1854 as his home and as a hotel.

In 1860, Jefferson’s population had expanded to nearly 4,000.

When Jacob Conser moved to what is now Jefferson, the only road through the area was a wagon trail to Santiam City, a community that would later be washed away during the flood of 1861.

In 1864, Confederate General and former Missouri Governor Sterling Price and his men marched to within four miles of the city and announced they would attack.

Lincoln University, founded there in 1866 by African American Union Army veterans, is now racially integrated.

In 1867, Jefferson became the first town in Texas to use artificial gas lighting, generated from retorts, which extracted gas from burning pine knots and heavily sap laden pine logs locally known as rich lighter pine.

The Jefferson municipal government was incorporated on October 20, 1870.

Built by a governor with a lifelong limp because of a shot to the leg in a duel he fought against a rival politician on a sandbar, this stately residence has been home to every governor since 1872.

But the Missouri constitution of 1875 restored peace of mind to the citizens and a period of expansion began.

Moore (her real name was Annie Stone), who was reputed to have been a famous prostitute, arrived in Jefferson by steamboat in January 1877 with her gregarious and flamboyant partner, Abraham Rothschild.

The City in the Twentieth CenturyAfter 1900, the local economy began to grow again with the expansion of the state government.

In 1904, The Supreme Court Building was constructed with funds from the St Louis World's Fair.

In 1911, street car service began in the city, and a dramatic fire brought the destruction of the old State House.

Classes for free black students were inaugurated in 1866. It achieved university status in 1921.

Martin Institute, the world’s first publicly endowed secondary school, became Jefferson High School in 1946.

The Jefferson School system Foundation was chartered in 1983 as a partial response to the advancing ages of many of Jefferson’s most ardent supporters and benefactors.

At the passing of Morris Bryan in late 1984, many gifts were bequeathed to the Foundation, thus creating the corpus of the fund whereby its activities are possible.