How it came to be called Sage…At the time that the Trustees purchased the one-acre parcel of ground known as Sage Chapel Cemetery in 1881, a travelling preacher named Jefferson Franklin Sage was ministering between St. Charles and Jonesburg, Missouri.[1] That purchase include a half acre of ground on what was often referred to as “the hill” in O’Fallon [today’s Sonderen Avenue] which they would divide into two lots. One, a quarter acre lot would be purchased by Liberty Abington which would pay off the purchase for both the cemetery and the Sonderen Avenue property. On the other half, the Trustees would build a small African American chapel, which they would name Sage Chapel, probably because the first traveling minister that would preach here was named Jefferson Franklin Sage.
Members of the St. Charles African American community met with members of the African Methodist Episcopal Conference in St. Louis Conference on October 18, 1865, and subsequently founded the St. Charles Conference, which included the St. John’s AME in St. Charles, then Sage Chapel on what is today’s Sonderen, then Grant Chapel AME in Wentzville and finally Smith Chapel AME in Foristell. All of these would first be served by traveling ministers. (From the Church Records of St. John AME). The only ones still standing are St. Johns on Washington in St. Charles, and Grant Chapel in Wentzville.
Twenty two-year old Pastor Sage was living in Jonesburg in 1876 with his wife Liza and 2 small sons John and Dick. He lost his wife and one son before 1878. He remarried in 1879 and moved to St. Charles in 1880[2]. He and his second wife Mary, have a new son James, and he works as a clerk at the American Car Foundry when living in St. Charles in 1880. Pastor Jefferson Franklin Sage is found throughout the records of St. John’s African Methodist Episcopal at their Quarterly Conference, beginning in 1878, and the records noted as Grant Chapel[3], another African Methodist Episcopal Church in Wentzville( already established). He is recorded as a Jonesburg minister, and indicated as traveling between Jonesburg and St. Charles. No church records for Sage Chapel African Methodist Church have been located yet, which tell us how the name of Sage Chapel Cemetery relates to “Local Preacher Jefferson Sage”. However, he was apparently well loved by the black community as he continued to serve in that capacity for many years. By 1894, J.F. Sage is serving a new congregation as a minister in Kansas. He would later be called to Lexington, Missouri, where he died in 1922.
[1] Records of the Conferences of the African Methodist Church, Records located in the St. Charles County Historical Society, 101 S. Main Street, St. Charles, MO 63301
[2] 1880 Census, Saint Charles, St Charles, Missouri; Roll: 714; Family History Film: 1254714; Page: 72A; Enumeration District: 201
[3] Records located in the St. Charles County Historical Society, 101 S. Main Street, St. Charles, MO 63301
WANT A DAILY DOSE OF ST CHARLES COUNTY HISTORY? SUBSCRIBE BY EMAIL AND YOU DON’T HAVE TO CATCH ME ON FACEBOOK.
ST. CHARLES COUNTY HISTORY 
One response to “Sage Chapel A.M.E. Church”
[…] the road from Simon and Cora, was Liberty Abington, who lived next door to the Sage Chapel Church. He had purchased that quarter acre from the Church’s trustees in 1881. The Abington family […]
LikeLike