Knoxville, Missouri

Knoxville is an unincorporated rural village in north central Ray County, in the U.S. state of Missouri[1] and part of the Kansas City metropolitan area.

[3] Laid out in 1837 by John Graves of Tennessee, it was originally named Buncombe on January 24, 1838.

[4] Buncombe was selected because some of the settlers came from Buncombe County, North Carolina; however, the name was soon changed—a large share of the early settlers being natives of Tennessee caused the name of Knoxville, after Knoxville, Tennessee, to be selected.

[7] When Caldwell County, just north of Ray County, was created by the Missouri Legislature in 1836 as a settlement area for the Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, a six-mile-wide strip of east–west-running land, known as Buncombe's Strip, became a topic of debate.

This Ray County, Missouri state location article is a stub.