[4] It was renamed Lafayette County on February 16, 1825, in honor of Revolutionary War hero the Marquis de La Fayette, who was then visiting the United States.

[5] Lafayette County was settled primarily from migrants from the Upper Southern states of Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia.

They brought enslaved people and slaveholding traditions and started cultivating crops similar to those in Middle Tennessee and Kentucky: hemp and tobacco.

As a young man, he enlisted in the Confederate forces from here, and gained the rank of captain during the American Civil War.

Afterward, he settled in Shreveport, Louisiana, where he married, became a successful merchant and banker, and served on the Caddo Parish Police Jury.

[6] But immigrants from Germany, as well as German Americans from St. Louis, began arriving shortly before the war, with many more to come afterwards.

They eventually made up a large part of the populations of Concordia, Emma, Wellington, Napoleon, Higginsville, Mayview, and Lexington.

Sunday May 4, 1919, Lafayette County Sheriff Joseph C. Talbott was killed while transporting car thieves to jail.

Lafayette County is divided into two legislative districts in the Missouri House of Representatives, both of which are held by Republicans.