ST. CHARLES COUNTY HISTORY

On Cottleville’s Chestnut Street sits a large two-and-one-half story frame building that once served its’ Methodist Episcopal South congregation. By 1811, John Pitman, a veteran of the Revolutionary War had come to Missouri from Kentucky, settling just to the south of the Cottle family. Portions of his huge estate would provide two additions to the town of Cottleville. John Pitman was owner of a large amount of enslaved property. He had been born in what was Bedford County Virginia in 1757. In 1776, Kentucky would become a County of Virginia, and eventually a state in 1792. By 1800, we find Pitman paying taxes on that property in Kentucky. However, many early Missouri settlers were like Pitman, and had received payment for their service in the Continental Congress in the form of a Land Warrant, in the newly acquired Louisiana Territory. In February of 1805, John married Magdelene Irvine, and their son David Kyle Pitman was born that December. The Methodist religion had come to Missouri with the preachings of John Clark in 1816. According to the Methodist Archives at Central Methodist University in Fayette “In 1844 when the Methodist Episcopal Church separated into the MEC and the MEC, South, Missouri officially went South. Both churches operated in Missouri, many times side-by-side in the same town“. By 1854, John Pitman’s son David, and his son Richard would join with others to build a frame church building at the cost of $1,600. Other founding members were William C. Ellis, S. R. Watts, and James T. Sanford.They would start out with 20 members. Their enslaved would sit in the gallery upstairs.

The photograph below shows Cottleville’s Public School in the background. The Boone’s Lick Road passes through the town of Cottleville.