A county in the northern central part of the state, bounded on the North by Adair and Knox; east by Knox and Shelby; south by Randolph and Chariton; and west by Chariton and Linn counties. The territory now embraced in Macon county was settled about 1830. The first settlement was made about four miles north of the present city of Macon. Among the pioneers were : Thomas Williams, Nathan Richardson, Jacob Loe, William Sears, James Cowhan, Erbin East, E. Penton and the Wright, McCall, Shackleford, Moody, Summers, Gibson, Dysart, Powell, McCann, King, Morrow, and Rowland families, all of whom settled near together in the southwestern part of the county, where a little hamlet was formed and became known as Moccasinville. This place was near the present site of the village of Atlanta.
William T. Smith, one of the Burns family and James Stone, from Wayne county, Kentucky, settled in what is the southern part of the county. Nearly all of the early settlers came from Wayne County, Kentucky, with a few from Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. When the earliest pioneers arrived there were a few wandering bands of Indians in the county. The red men were friendly, caused no trouble, and within a few years they joined their tribes, which by treaty were given territory further west. by 1837, when the county was organized, within its limits were more than 5,000 people.
Macon County was erected out of Randolph County by legislative act, approved January 6, 1837, and named in honor of Nathaniel Macon, of North Carolina. The General Assembly named Joseph M. Baker, Henry Lassiter and James Pipes commissioners to locate a permanent seat of justice, and directed that they meet on the first Monday of May, 1837, at the house of D.C. Garth, where they met as directed. the next meeting was held June 12th, of the same year, and they selected a portion of land owned by James Cochran and Daniel C. Hubbard, who donated to the county " without limit or reservation" fifty acres. this land was originally entered by Joseph and Canada Owenby, Mark Dunn, and Clem Hutchinson, and was about eight miles northeast of the present site of the city of Macon. On June 4, 1838, the county court "ordered that the county seat of said county be called and known by the name and style of Bloomington", and that James Ratliff, commissioner of the county, lay off the same in town lots and public square. August 9, 1838, the county court made an order reserving from sale Block 17, of the town of Bloomington, for the purpose of a public square, and Lot Number 26, Block 7, for a jail. The town was laid out by James Londay, Abney L. Gilstrap, and William Sears. The courthouse was finished in 1841 and was the only courthouse built in the county until  1865, when the present courthouse was built at a cost of $50,000, the county seat having been changed to Macon in 1863, but not moved until after the war concluded.
The first County Court of Macon county was held at the house of Jacob Owenby, about eight mils northeast of the city of Macon, on the first Monday in May, 1837. The first county justices were John S. Morrow, Joseph Owenby, and James Cochran, with Daniel C. Hubbard, clerk, and Jefferson Morrow, sheriff. The first license granted by the court was to W.H. Rowland to run a grocery store.
The first grand jury was composed of James Wells, foreman; James Riley, Micajah Hull, Canada Owenby, James A Terrill, Nathaniel Richardson, Nathan Dabney, Jesse Gillstrap, Isaac Gross, Thomas J. Dabney, John F. Northrup, Richard Calvert, William Smith, Birdrick Posey, Thomas Williams, Lewis Green, James T. Haley, James A. Griffith, Stephen Gibson, and David Young. the first indictments returned were against six men for gambling with cards.
Among the first resident physicians of Macon county were Abraham Still, brother of the founder of the school known as osteopathy: A.T. Still of Kirksville, Missouri; John Wilkin, Arthur Barron, and William Proctor. Among the first school teachers in the county was Oliver P. Davis, who conducted a subscription school near the old town of Bloomington. The first newspaper in the county was established in 1850 at Bloomington, and was called the "Bloomington Gazette". It was published by James M. Love.
The first mill in the county was built by Judge Cochran in 1837, near the old town of Bloomington. Later one Jones built a mill on Middle Fork, and one Daly built a mill on the "divide". Source: Encyclopedia of the History of Missouri, 1910

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