Place names of six southeast counties of Missouri

Abstract

Counties: Pemiscot, Dunklin, New Madrid, Scott, Mississippi, and Stoddard

"This study is one of a series undertaken to solve the problem of the origin of place-names in the one hundred and fourteen counties of Missouri and the city of St. Louis. This investigation was begun in 1928, and eight studies, covering sixty-three counties, have been completed. The present survey includes the six southeast counties of Pemiscot, Dunklin, New Madrid, Scott, Mississippi, and Stoddard. These counties represent the oldest and the newest in Missouri history. New Madrid County, which once embraced all of the territory of these six counties as well as that to the west and south of this section, was first organized in 1812, eight years before Missouri became a state; and Pemiscot is the youngest county in the state save Bollinger, which was organized one month after Pemiscot in 1851. A wide sweep of history is included in the placenames of this section, from Mississippi, a name of Indian origin known to have existed before 1539 when DeSoto first saw this body of water, to Culbertson in Pemiscot County, which is less than a year old -- so young that its progenitors are uncertain of its survival through infancy."--Page 1.