The town was beginning to assume considerable importance, and the citizens felt as though their dignity could be very materially advanced. and sustained if Jamesport was an incorporated town. They were out on the open prairie without metes or bounds, and they felt lonely standing in this ex-posed way. To remedy the evil and to effect a local habitation and a name, and to be anchored for all time in. the place of their adoption, they felt that nothing could achieve this object so well as corporation stakes driven here and there, and the town fastened to them by act of incorporation. This feeling culminated in the following petition:
Incorporation of Jamesport
“Now at this day comes Nathaniel G. Cruzen and sixty other citizens of the town of Jamesport and present their petition for the incorporation of the town of Jamesport, which petition is in words and figures as follows:
“To the Honorable County Court of Daviess County:
“Your petitioners, inhabitants of the town of Jamesport, beg leave to represent that the town of Jamesport in said county and State, with the adjacent commons is located and described by metes and bounds as follows:
“Beginning at the northwest corner of the southeast quarter of the south-east quarter of section number twenty-seven (27), in township number sixty (60) of range number twenty-six (26); thence running south one hundred and twenty (120) rods; thence east one hundred and twenty (120) rods; thence north one hundred and twenty (120) rods; thence west one hundred and twenty (120) rods, to the place of beginning; containing ninety (90) acres. And pray that we may be incorporated, and a police established for our lo-cal government and for the preservation and regulation of our commons, etc.” [Signed:]
“Which petition is received, and it appearing to the satisfaction of the court that two-thirds of the taxable inhabitants of said town of Jamesport have signed said petition and that the prayer of said petitioners is reason-able, it is therefore ordered by the court that the said town of Jamesport be and is hereby incorporated under the name and style of the town of James-port, and the metes and bounds of said town of Jamesport be, and they are hereby fixed as in the petition called for, and that all the territory within the above described bounds be and is hereby invested with all the rights and privileges guaranteed to such towns incorporated under chapter forty-one of the general statutes of the State of Missouri. And it is further ordered by the court that Franklin Callison, Nathaniel G. Cruzen, Marc) Thomas, A. B. Barnes and Isaiah H. Jones be and they are hereby appointed the board of trustees in and for said town, to hold their offices until their successors are elected and qualified.”
This act of incorporation was passed August 6,1872, by the County Court, and Jamesport from that time on assumed metropolitan airs. Situated in one of the finest agricultural districts to be found in the valley of the Grand River, she has reason to be proud of her location and the energy and progressiveness of her people.
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