COUNTY REPORTS. 273 



but handy to shippers. As the railroads are owned by different com- 

 panies, some coini)etition influencing freight rates is secured. 



The county has about 1900 population. Savannah, the county seat, 

 has almost 2000 people. This town has electric lights, also a high 

 school. No county has better schools; including high and graded 

 schools we have 85. The public school fund is $80,000. There are 

 many churches of different denominations. 



Andrew county is out of debt. The tax, not including school-tax, 

 is 60 to 90 cents per hundred dollars assessed value, which is about 

 one-third the real value. The average price of land is from $25 to $30 

 per acre, occasionally $50 and more for well situated and improved 

 farms. A good deal of iine fruit land, timbered land, can be had at 15 

 to 20 dollars per acre. 



The social relations are of the best. Politically the county is about 



equally divided by the two old parties. 



G. Segesseman. 



BARRY COUNTY. 



Southwest Missouri, Arkansas on the south, one county from the 

 Indian Territory. It has one railroad, running from north to south, 

 about eight miles from the west line. Towns on the railroad are, 

 Monett, Purdy, Butterfleld, Exeter, Washburn and Seligman — Monett 

 at the north line, Seligman at the south line and Exeter in the center, 

 with Cassville, the county seat, four miles east of Exeter, off the rail- 

 road. There are many small villages in the county with postoffices, so 

 no one has to travel more than five or six miles for their mail. 



The land is high and rolbng, some parts rising to small mountains, 

 with deep, narrow valleys, while other portions are level, and a gradual 

 slope to wide valleys. The valleys are all supplied with beautiful 

 streams of water, fed by springs, flowing all the time. Many of these 

 streams have mills which grind and saw and do other machine work 

 through the whole year. Some three fourths of the county is covered 

 with timber and brush, almost of every known variety of this latitude. 

 The stone is lime, sand, cotton and flint. The last is of no value for 

 building purposes. 



The soil is of various kinds. The valleys are a deep, black, gravel 

 loam : the hill-land is black gravel and stone and clay, gravel and stone. 

 Some of the flat laud^ where post-oak grows, has but little gravel or 



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