Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Springfield (Missouri)

SPRINGFIELD, a city of the United States, county seat of Greene county, Missouri, occupies a pleasant and healthy site on the Ozark Hills, 238 miles by rail south-west of St Louis by the St Louis and San Francisco Railroad, which here joins with the Kansas City, Fort Scott, and Gulf Railroad. Springfield is the chief commercial centre of south-west Missouri, one of the great lead and zinc mining districts of the States. It contains a number of factories (cotton, wool, waggons, furniture, tobacco, &c.), and is the seat of a court-house and of Drury College (1873), which provides scientific and classical training and has a musical conservatory attached. The population was 5555 in 1870, 6522 in 1880, and in 1886 was estimated at 18,000.

Originally an Indian trading post and frontier village, Springfield was incorporated in 1830 and began to be a prosperous place at the close of the Civil War, during which it had several times changed hands and been the scene of hostilities.