Monticello is a rural village in, and county seat of, Lewis County, Missouri, United States, along the North Fabius River. The population was 104 at the 2020 census, and according to this census, Monticello is the county seat with the smallest population in the State of Missouri. The town is named in honor of President Thomas Jefferson's estate in Virginia. They passed on selecting already established villages like Tully and Canton along the Mississippi River and instead selected a location near the geographic center of the new county. An early settler, Andrew P. Williams, donated sixty acres of land and the town was laid out in the fall of 1833. However it would not be surveyed until the next year. The first Lewis County courthouse in Monticello was a single-story primitive log structure which stood about 100 yards from the current courthouse site. Completed by June 1834, it was used only until a more substantial two-story brick courthouse could be built in 1839.
The Civil War
The Monticello area, like much of Lewis County, was pro-Confederate during the American Civil War. Perhaps the town's most significant contribution to the Southern cause was one of its most notable citizens, Martin E. Green. He and his brother, U.S. Senator James S. Green had come to Lewis County from Virginia in the mid-1830s. While James became a lawyer and politician, Martin operated a successful sawmill near Monticello. He would also enter politics, becoming a judge of the Lewis County court. With the outbreak of the Civil War and a riot at Canton on July 4, 1861, Judge Green called on Lewis County's pro-Confederate citizens to assemble under the banner of the Missouri State Guard at a training camp on the Fabius River at "Horseshoe Bend" not far from Monticello. A few weeks later Green's forces would be defeated by pro-Union Missouri Home Guards at the Battle of Athens in neighboring Clark county. Green and his band of northeast Missouri cavalrymen would go on to fight at Lexington, Missouri, Battle of Pea Ridge (Arkansas), and elsewhere in the trans-Mississippi theater. Green would rise to the rank of Confederate Brigadier General before being killed at the Siege of Vicksburg in late June 1863. Meanwhile, other units of Confederate bushwhackers and pro-Union forces would continue to clash in the county. On July 9, 1862, Confederate guerrilla leader Raphael Smith, a pre-war tanner in the area, raided Monticello with a force of eighty men. There they captured or "liberated" various supplies and forced one the towns ardent Union supporters to take an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy. Smith's group would again attempt to raid Monticello a few weeks later on September 1, but were driven off by the approach of a 300-man Union cavalry patrol. According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of , all land.
Demographics
2010 census
As of the census of 2010, there were 98 people, 42 households, and 24 families residing in the village. The population density was . There were 49 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the village was 94.9% White, 1.0% African American, 3.1% Native American, and 1.0% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 3.1% of the population.
There were 42 households, of which 31.0% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 42.9% were married couples living together, 9.5% had a female householder with no husband present, 4.8% had a male householder with no wife present, and 42.9% were non-families. 40.5% of all households were made up of individuals, and 16.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.14 and the average family size was 2.79.
The median age in the village was 43 years. 19.4% of residents were under the age of 18; 9% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 28.6% were from 25 to 44; 29.6% were from 45 to 64; and 13.3% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the village was 50.0% male and 50.0% female.
2000 census
As of the census
Education
It is in the Lewis County C-1 School District<!--UNI 18460-->.
Notable people
- Edward McKendree Bounds, author, attorney and prominent minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church South
- James S. Green, congressman and senator from Missouri
- Martin E. Green, Lewis County judge and later Confederate brigadier general during the American Civil War
- Robert Earl Hughes, Entertainer and sideshow performer, known to be the heaviest human being recorded