Editing Lafe, Arkansas (section)

== History ==
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The first settler of Lafe was Herman Toelken, a German immigrant who had been living in [[New Haven, Missouri]], and was seeking new opportunities in an unsettled area. Toelken began cutting railroad ties for the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern (later Missouri Pacific) railroad in order to save enough money to purchase land and send for his family.

When Toelken was settled he began advertising in a [[Minneapolis]] German newspaper seeking other German [[Lutherans]] to come to the area. Several families responded to this advertisement, and an assortment of German immigrant families followed him from [[Franklin County, Missouri]].

On December 9, 1889, an application was made to the [[US Postal Service]] for the establishment of a post office for "Newberry, Arkansas", so named due to a sawmill operator of the same name who had set up in the area. The name "Newberry" was denied by the Postal Service, so the postmaster combined the names of his daughters and reapplied with the name "Loulyma", which was accepted. Mail arrived addressed to "Loulyma" and freight arrived addressed to "Newberry". In 1901 a new postmaster named Lafayette Mueller took over and sought to settle the name permanently by resubmitting a new name. Townspeople elected to name the town "Lafe" in honor of the new postmaster, and the name was officially changed on May 21, 1902.