Award winning author, and International speaker. President of the Archer Alexander Memorial Foundation. Member of the Missouri Speakers Bureau and the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. President of the Boone’s Lick Road Association. Executive Director of the Missouri Germans Consortium. She has been writing for over 35 years and published several books on local history, German immigration, and other topics. Currently working on To Tell a True Story – Archer Alexander.
Sonderen Street in O’Fallon Missouri was once home to many of the families whose loved ones and families are buried in Sage Chapel Cemetery.
Eldora Abington (15 June 1863- 25 March 1921) , wife of Liberty Abington (21 December 1857 – 14 June 1931), passed away on March 28, 1921, in her home, next door to Sage Chapel A.M.E., in O’Fallon [on Sonderen Street]. She was born June 15, 1868, the daughter of Alex Welch. She leaves behind Jessica born 1887, Bessie born 1889, Allie born 1892, Todie born 1896, and a son Eddy born 1903. After a memorial at the church, E.A. Keithly of O’Fallon served as the undertaker for the Abington family for the burial in Sage Chapel Cemetery, next to her husband who is also buried there, but no headstone has ever been found.
Cora E. White passed away on Thursday, November 23, 1972. She had been born Cora Abington on September 10, 1882, the daughter of Louis and Mollie Abington. She grew up in the community of the Hopewell Baptist Church, a very old African American Church south of Wentzville on Hwy N (the Boone’s Lick Road). We know she had brothers and sisters named Fred, Ardalia, John, Oregon, Tennessee and Troy. When she was a young girl of 18, she married Simon “Samuel” L. White on June 3, 1901 and they made their early home in O’Fallon on Main Street. near the home of the town’s founder, the widower Nicholas Krekel, where he lived with his daughter Bertha Krekel. Simon and Cora had several children, some whose names we will never know, because there were no records. We do know there was Margaret “Flossy”, Arthur, Sylvester, sweet Jessie who they lost when she was just 19 years old, Frona, Beulah, Tommy, Eugene (pictured), Robert, Corine (Thornton) and LuLurean (Vardeman). By the 1920s, Cora and Simon had moved their family over to “the Hill” which is today’s Sonderen, and were members of Wishwell Baptist Church. There they had more room for their family, and could raise chickens and have a larger garden because O’Fallon was growing and changing. When she passed, she joined her dear husband Simon who had preceded her in death, at Sage Chapel Cemetery.
Eugene White: picture taken at age 4 months (1918). Son of Simon and Cora Abington White, Grandson of Lucy White. Portrait was taken at Maxwell Studio, 2007 Lawton Ave. Photo from the O’Fallon Missouri Historical Society.
The Keithly farm directly adjoined land purchased by German emigrant Arnold Krekel to the northwest, of 320 acres, where the town of O’Fallon was founded in 1856. Arnold’s brother Nicholas Krekel would become the O’Fallon Station’s first postmaster and Station Agent when the North Missouri Railroad came through in the 1850s. But Keithley had been there for many years before, since the 1830s, and his land was further east. And on his land was a road that led from his plantation house up into town to the Railroad tracks, just east of the station. On that road, his enslaved had lived for generations, which was how it had earned its name. The 1930 Census taker would refer to it in a derogitory manner, but for the sake of our younger readers, I will just call it “the hill”. Today, we call it Sonderen avenue.
Simon and Cora (Abington) White and their grandchildren
Sage Chapel Cemetery sits on an adjoining hill to the south, that the pall bearers coming from the three black churches would have to climb for each funeral. Going home, they would descend and then climb up “the hill” as they headed back to town. (One has to take today’s Interstate 70 out of the picture.) The first home they would pass would be that of Simon White, on the west (left) side of the road. Tucked back out of site, the house had been built in the early 1900s, and the high schoolers would catch the old rickety bus to St. Charles called Franklin School to be able to get their education. His wife Cora was born an Abington.
Across 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 had been brought to Missouri back in 1837, enslaved by Henry Abington, who settled just south of Snow Hill, today’s Foristell. Nathan Abington who was only six years old when they came, was one of the early burials at Smith Chapel Cemetery, when he died in 1899. There are also Abington family buried at Grant Chapel Cemetery in Wentzville. (no longer standing)
After passing Liberty’s house you came to Wishwell Baptist Church, which was right along the creek bottom where they would hold revivals and baptisms along with their services. The earliest black Baptist Church in St. Charles County is Hopewell, and was where they were former members. Hopewell Baptist Church had been started over on the Boone’s Lick Road back before the Civil War. This was a very old church. (no longer standing)
As you climbed the hill, on the west (left) side, you passed the black school house that the members of community had built. Education was segregated back then, and very few communities had schoolhouses that were attended by both the black and white children together. This was only the early grades for the area’s children in the 1800s.
In the back is the corner of the Black school to the left, and then Cravens Methodist Church to the right. The children are of the Obrecht family, for which we are indebted for the picture.
Right next to the schoolhouse was the Cravens Methodist Church South (no longer standing) which originally allowed the enslaved to sit in the gallery to attend. Later, the white community would build another Methodist Church south of town, and the black people would start using this church building. Since Sage Chapel was not being used, it would fall into disrepair. All three churches, Sage Chapel, Wishwell, and Cravens would use what we call Sage Chapel Cemetery to bury in. And for a brief period, at the turn of the century a dispute led to Wishwell and Cravens purchasing an acre of land across town and creating a cemetery named Union Cemetery. However it was short lived, and everyone returned to using what we call Sage Chapel by 1910.
Across the street on the east side sits a large two story house, that was being used by the black Oddfellows at nearly the same time. When the house was later sold, the buyer was informed that the Oddfellows would still hold title, and their meetings for two more years. The family who were purchasing it, were living down the street, and that was fine.
I’m sure this tour of the hill is not complete, as there were others who lived on the hill… the Edwards, Williams, Lucketts, Claiborne, Oday, Griffen, Hubbard and Stuart. This is a story of a community, all born in Missouri. From the 78-year-old Judge Williams, who had been born enslaved back in 1850, and his son Thomas’ house was where Pearl Hubbard, the school teacher boarded, down to 9 year old Nellie Luckett, just past the Thomas Luckett house, all according to the 1930 Census. These were the people who lived on the hill.
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
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