Canton is a city in Lewis County, Missouri, United States. The population was 2,774 at the 2020 census. Canton is the home of Culver-Stockton College, a small liberal arts bookish affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). It afterward had the oldest continuously working ferry across the Mississippi River, which closed in April 2014. Four members of the United States House of Representatives have come from Canton, and are buried in the city’s Forest Grove Cemetery. Canton is ration of the Quincy, IL–MO Micropolitan Statistical Area.

The city of Canton, believed to be named in award of Canton, Ohio, predates the surrounding Lewis County by three years, having been founded in 1830, whereas the county would not be created from allowance of Marion county until 1833. It was founded by Issac Bland, Robert Sinclair, and Edward White—the latter constructing the town’s first home in February, 1830. The building plus doubled as Canton’s first business, a tavern. Canton’s to the lead history could without difficulty be called a parable of two cities. The village of Tully, founded in November, 1834, was just a mile north of fledgling Canton and had a slightly better area for steamboats to anchor. Being the preferred spot to load and unload cargo, Tully slowed Canton’s layer for the first two decades of its existence. However a series of floods, especially a major one in 1851, destroyed much of Tully. The few remnants of Tully were destroyed in the to the front 1930s during the construction of Lock and Dam No. 20.

Canton, with its somewhat cutting edge ground but nevertheless close river proximity experienced brusque growth more than the next-door nine years after Tully’s demise and by 1860 had a population of higher than 2,000 people. The town was officially incorporated on January 28, 1851. Ferry promote across the Mississippi River dates urge on as far as 1844 in the Canton area, the first creature at Tully. On February 24, 1853 a charter was approved for the “Lewis-Adams” river ferry. The to the lead ferries were paddlewheel craft bearing in mind the knack supplied by horses on treadmills. Local travelers and those heading westward in action of a other life intended heavy use of the ferry, with into the future fares subconscious 50 cents per wagon and 10 cents for travelers on foot. In an mature where railroads were yet few Canton, along next Alexandria, Missouri several miles upriver to the north, became major trading and shipping points for towns and counties on the northeast Missouri interior. A stage lineage ran from Canton as far west as Kirksville, some eighty miles away in Adair county, prior to the American Civil War.

Another key event in Canton’s archives came virtually in 1853 subsequent to the founding of “Christian University”, now known as Culver-Stockton College. Closed for a epoch of grow old during the Civil War, the speculative reopened in 1865 and has been a establishment of the community since. Henderson Hall, a.k.a. “Old Main”, on the Culver-Stockton campus is listed upon the National Register of Historic Places. As a strategic river port, Canton was functional considerably in the Civil War. Loyalties were heavily poisoned and both the Union and Confederate armies recruited heavily in the town and surrounding area. Federal troops occupied Canton in July, 1861 to quell recent unrest and quash recruiting for the Missouri State Guard and pro-Confederate guerrillas by Lewis county residents Martin E. Green, Joseph C. Porter and others. On August 2, 1862 Colonel Porter ordered a raid upon Canton. One resident was killed and another, a Union sympathizer, kidnapped by the bushwhackers, who plus stole large quantities of weapons, medicine and new supplies.