Editing Bollinger County, Missouri (section)

==History==
In fall 1799, [[George Frederick Bollinger]], a North Carolina settler of German descent <ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RfAuAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA210 |title=How Missouri Counties, Towns and Streams Were Named |publisher=The State Historical Society of Missouri |author=Eaton, David Wolfe |year=1916 |pages=210}}</ref> persuaded 20 other families<ref>Making the journey from [[North Carolina]] with Bollinger were his brothers John, Daniel, and Mathias Bollinger and two nephews, Mann Henry Bollinger and William Bollinger. Several friends also joined the expedition including brothers George and Peter Grount (Grounds) along with Peter's young son Daniel Grount, brothers Peter and Conrad Statler, Joseph Neyswanger, Peter Crytes, Jacob Cotner, John and Isaac Miller, Frederick Limbaugh, Leonard Welker and Frederick Slinkard. Also with him family of Johannes Caspar Shell; Michael, Caspar and Benjamin Shell.</ref>  to leave [[North Carolina]] and settle in a region immediately west of what is now [[Cape Girardeau, Missouri]]. To acquire the land, Bollinger first had to sign off a document asserting that he and his fellow settlers were all [[Catholics|Roman Catholics]]. In reality, most of the group were members of the [[German Reformed Church]] and none were actually Catholic. However, [[Don Louis Lorimier]], the Spanish Land Commandant of Cape Girardeau, had been impressed by Bollinger on an earlier visit and decided to bend the rules for him and his fellow settlers.

Lorimier's willingness to place German Reformed settlers west of Cape Girardeau is somewhat perplexing given his earlier role in placing a group of [[Shawnee]] settlers in that same location. Lorimier had earlier fled [[Ohio Country]] with his half-Shawnee wife and a band of Shawnee after a raid by men under George Rogers Clark in 1782. He eventually migrated across the Mississippi River and settled at Cape Girardeau in 1793. Later he was appointed Land Commandant at Cape Girardeau.

The Bollinger-led group of families moved into an area that became known as the "Dutch Settlement" along the [[Whitewater River (Missouri)|Whitewater River]] in January 1800, crossing their wagons over the Mississippi River after an unusually cold stretch of weather had frozen the surface all the way across.{{citation needed|date=February 2014}}

Meanwhile, ownership of the region shifted in quick succession from [[Spain]] to [[France]] and then in 1803 to the [[United States]] via the [[Louisiana Purchase]]. The change in national ownership did not bode well for the earlier Shawnee settlers. In 1825 they were removed permanently when the U.S. government enacted the [[Treaty of St. Louis (1825)|treaty with the Shawnee in 1825]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://dc.library.okstate.edu/digital/collection/kapplers/id/26104|title=Indian affairs: laws and treaties, Vol. 2 (Treaties) {{!}} Treaty with the Shawnee, 1825, Article 1, Page 263|last=Kappler|first=Charles Joseph|date=1904|website=digital.library.okstate.edu|language=en|access-date=March 24, 2018}}</ref> This treaty, whose first signatory was [[William Clark (explorer)|William Clark]] of the [[Lewis and Clark Expedition]] fame, required that the Shawnee move to what is now known as [[Shawnee Mission, Kansas]], on land that had previously belonged to the [[Osage Nation|Osage]] tribes. One of the [[Cherokee]] [[Trail of Tears]] routes passed through Sedgewickville, while another passed through Glennon and Zalma.

The region west of Cape Girardeau was organized as a county in 1851 and was named Bollinger County in honor of [[George Frederick Bollinger]]. The county seat was Dallas, renamed Marble Hill in 1865.  In the next county to the west, [[Madison County, Missouri|Madison County]], the settlement of [[Fredericktown, Missouri|Fredericktown]] was also named after Bollinger.