Sedalia is a city located nearly 30 miles (50 kilometers) south of the Missouri River and, as the county seat of Pettis County, Missouri, United States, it is the principal city of the Sedalia Micropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2010 census, the city had a sum population of 21,387. Sedalia is then the location of the Missouri State Fair and the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival. U.S. Routes 50 and 65 intersect in the city.

Indigenous peoples lived along the Missouri River and its tributaries for thousands of years back European contact. Historians admit the entire area around Sedalia was long occupied by the Osage (among historical American Indian tribes). When the home was first arranged by European Americans, bands of Shawnee, who had migrated from east of the Mississippi River, lived in the vicinity of Sedalia.

Until the city was incorporated in 1860 as Sedalia, it had existed only “on paper” from November 30, 1857, to October 16, 1860. According to local lore, the town council distorted the read out from Sedville to Sedalia in ration because “towns that terminate in -ville don’t amount to anything.” (Lawrence Ditton Sr.). Here is different account:

The area that became the European-American city of Sedalia was founded by General George Rappeen Smith (1804–1879), who next founded straightforward Smithton, Missouri. He filed plans for the approved record on November 30, 1857, and gave the area the name Sedville. The native plat included the house from today’s Missouri Pacific Railroad south to Third Street.