HISTORY OF SOUTHEAST MISSOURI 273 in politics, and the Greenville Siui, Republi- can. Piedmont Piedmont is a city of the fourth class sit- uated in Benton township, Wayne county, on the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railway. It was laid out at the completion of the Iron Mountain road to that point about 1860. It was made the division point of the railroad, the repair shops were erected and the town prospered very greatly. In 1888 Patterson Patterson, a town in Logan township, Wayne county, dates its beginning back to the year 1854. It was then known as Isbell's store, owing to the fact that Isbell was the first, and for a number of years the only merchant in the town. DeSoto DeSoto, the largest town in Jefferson county, is situated on the St. Louis, Iron High School, DeSoto about one-half of the business part of the town was destroyed by fire, and it has had other destructive fires since that time. It has revived from these damages, however, and is now a prosperous and growing community. It has good streets and sidewalks, electric lights, four churches, a good publii; school, which is housed in a modern school building, two banks, a flouring mill and about twenty other business enterprises of various kinds. The Piedmont Banner is a weekly paper pub- lished by Bristol French. There are three banks in the town with a combined capital of .$55,000. The present population is 1,154. Vol. 1—18 Mountain & Southern Railway forty-seven miles south of St. Louis. It is built partly in the valley of Joachim creek and partly on the hills overlooking the valley. The first resident on the site of the town was Van Home, who opened a farm here in 1808. In 1855 Colonel John W. Fletcher built a residence and saw mill on the site ; the town was not laid out until 1857, when Thomas C. Fletcher, afterward governor of Missouri, and Lewis J. Rankin had the site surveyed and liegan the sale of lots. A postoffice was estab- lished with C. E. Fletcher as the first post- master; E. M. Boli in the same year opened the first store, and the first brick house in the
