The first more or less permanent settlement at present-day New Madrid was established by bands of
Shawnee,
Delaware,
Creek, and
Cherokee who were turned into refugees due to the U.S. War for Independence. These refugee Native American bands accepted Spanish offers to settle on the west bank of the Mississippi River in the early 1780s. These mixed Native American groups established a settlement and informal trading post where a northward, horseshoe bend of the Mississippi met the Chepusa creek, which provided an easy place for landing boats. Native American hunters and European-American merchants made the settlement a location for processing the bounty of hunts, including the valuable but messy fat of bears and buffalo, which was used in preparing skins and furs. The settlement quickly acquired the name L’Anse a la Graise — “Cove of Grease” or “Greasy Cove.” European Americans renamed the settlement New Madrid around 1780 under the auspices of
Spanish Governor
Bernardo de Gálvez, who was appointed to rule
Spanish Louisiana (the land west of the Mississippi River), and
Manuel Pérez,
Lieutenant Governor of Upper Louisiana in
Saint Louis. They welcomed settlers from the United States, but required them to become subjects of (i.e. swear allegiance to) the Spanish crown. In addition, they had to agree to live under the guidance of his appointed
empresario, Colonel
George Morgan, an
American Revolutionary War veteran from
New Jersey. Morgan recruited a number of American families to settle at New Madrid, attracting a few hundred people to the region. Settlement in the 1790s and early 1800s remained relatively low due to the physical geography of New Madrid and its hinterlands. Morgan made commitments to nearby natives that settlers would not be permitted to hunt game for the purposes of large-scale fur trading, thus they would not be an economic threat to natives who relied on hunting. The Mississippi frequently washed away the town's river banks, and a Spanish fort was washed away. Surrounded by low, swampy land, New Madrid developed a well-earned reputation for diseases, especially in the summer and fall. Spanish census data from the late 1790s show around 800 residents at the village of New Madrid. New Madrid continued to operate as a site of exchange between Native Americans in the St. Francis River Valley and European American traders operating out of New Madrid. The area is noted as the site of a
series of nearly 2,000 earthquakes in 1811 and 1812, ranging up to approximately
magnitude 8, the most powerful non-
subduction zone earthquake ever recorded in the United States. New Madrid lies far from any
plate boundaries, but it is on the
New Madrid Seismic Zone. The major earthquake was felt as far away as the
East Coast. Starting in 1838, New Madrid was on the
Trail of Tears that saw thousands of Indians forcefully removed from Eastern lands and moving to Oklahoma. During the
Civil War, the
Battle of Island Number Ten took place on the Mississippi River near New Madrid. In the antebellum period, this fertile
floodplain area was developed for
cotton plantations, based on the labor of enslaved African Americans. They were emancipated after the Civil War and worked to make new lives. As whites struggled to re-establish dominance after the Reconstruction era, they intimidated and attacked blacks under the guise of
Jim Crow laws, working to suppress voting and control their activities. Three African-American men are documented as being
lynched by whites in New Madrid, the county seat, near the turn of the century: Unknown Negro, on November 29, 1898; Louis Wright, a musician in a
minstrel show accused of altercations with whites, hanged on February 17, 1902; and unknown Negro, May 30, 1910. By the turn of the 20th century, some industry was being developed in New Madrid, which contained two
lumber mills, a
grist mill, a
stave and
heading factory, and a
cotton gin. It was considered a rough town. ==Geography==