Dunklin County, MO
History
Dunklin county was officially organized on February 14, 1845, and is named in honor of Daniel Dunklin, a former Governor of Missouri who died the year before the county was organized.The identities of the first settlers, and when they located in the section now Dunklin County, is somewhat obscure. The first person to locate upon lands and make improvements, is said to have been Howard Moore, a native of Virginia, who had for some time lived in Tennessee, and in 1829 settled about four miles south of where the town of Malden is now located, where he built a house and cultivated land. In 1831 Moses Norman, of Alabama, located at West Prairie...Pleasant Cockrum and James Baker settled near what was Cockrum Post Office (1888), in the extreme southwestern part of the county...Long after white men became residents of the county, bands of Delaware Indians made their homes there. One of the last bands to leave were the Indians of Chief Chilliticoux, and the town of Kennett was first named after him.
The first court house was a log building erected in the public square of Chilliticoux in 1847. It was destroyed during or just after the Civil War, and in 1870 the erection of a large frame building was begun. It was completed in 1872, and had been occupied but a short time when it was burned to the ground.
Source: A Directory of Towns, Villages, and Hamlets Past and Present of Dunklin County, Missouri, Compiled by Arthur Paul Moser