Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Lawrence (Kansas)

LAWRENCE, a city of Kansas, U.S., the capital of Douglas county, is situated on both sides of the Kansas river, about 40 miles above its junction with the Missouri. Founded in 1854 by the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society as a centre of the anti-slavery party, Lawrence was at first retarded in its development by the disturbed condition of the State; but its population has rapidly in creased from 1645 in 1860 to 8511 in 1880, and it is now the fourth city in the State in population and wealth. It is a considerable railway junction, has a good trade, and numbers among its manufacturing establishments a pork-packing factory, planing-mills, foundries, carriage works, grist-mills, and breweries. A dam has been constructed across the Kansas. In 1862-63 the State university was settled at Lawrence, the buildings occupying a fine site on Mount Oread, a bluff in the south-west part of the city; in 1880 it had 14 teachers and 438 students. In 1856 Lawrence was sacked and partially burned by a party of soldiers and Missourians claiming to act with the sanction of the U.S. Government, and in 1863, during the civil war, it was captured and burned by a Confederate guerilla force.