SEDALIA  , a

city and the county-seat of Pettis county, Missouri, U.S.A., a little W. of the centre of the state . Pop . (1900) 15,231; (1725negroes ;972 foreign-born); (1910) 17,822 . Sedalia is served by the Missouri Pacific and the Missouri, Kansas & Texas railway systems, and is a transportation centre with good facilities . The city has a high and pleasant site (about 990 ft. above sea-level) on a rolling prairie, and is laid out as an exact square . Among the public buildings much the handsomest are the court house, built of Warrensburg blue sandstone (1884), and the Public Library (1900), given by Andrew Carnegie . Sedalia is the seat of the George R . Smith College (M . E., founded in 1894) for negroes . Liberty Park (6o acres), in the W. part of the city, is owned by the municipality . Broadway, the principal residence street, is 120 ft. wide, and is parked on either side . The State Board of Agriculture established fair grounds (now 210 acres) adjoining the city on the S.W. in 1900, and the annual state fair attracts many visitors .

The

water supply is derived from a storage lake on Flat Creek, 3 M. from the city, settling basins being used to clarify the water . There are a city hospital and the Maywood, a private hospital; and the Missouri, Kansas & Texas railway maintains here a hospital for all parts of its system . The surrounding country is a magnificent livestock and farming region, and in the immediate vicinity are valuable deposits of coal, of limestone, of shale suitable for sewer pipe andof fire clays . The city has important horse and mule yards . The Missouri Pacific, three of whose operating divisions end at Sedalia and thus make the city its central division point, in 1904 established large shops (129 acres) in a suburb E. of the city . These shops and those of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas railway, of which Sedalia is the central division point on the N. end of its system, add greatly to the industrial importance of the city . The total value of the factory product in 1905 was $1,691,727, showing an increase of 31,8% since 1900 . Sedalia was established as a station on the Missouri Pacific railroad in 1857 . In 1864 it was chartered as a town and was made the county-seat, succeeding Georgetown (then a flourishing town, which speedily fell into decay), the transfer of the offices taking place in 1865 . Sedalia was a Union military post through-out the Civil War; on the 15th of October 1864 a detachment from Sterling Price's raiding column dislodged a small Union force that was occupying the town, but the Confederate occupation lasted only one day . Sedalia was chartered as a city in 1889 . In 1896 a constitutional amendment to remove the state capital from Jefferson City to Sedalia was defeated by popular vote .