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.
The founding of O’Fallon, Missouri was truly the joint enterprise of two German born brothers. It was the older brother, Arnold Krekel, who would purchase 320 acres of land from Francis Smith which adjoined the Keithley plantation, survey his property and lay out its’ original town plat, giving it the name of O’Fallon. His younger brother, Nicholas, would be its’ first resident, Stationmaster, and Postmaster, and take charge of the sale of lots. It would also be because of Nicholas and Mena Krekel’s strong Catholic faith, that Assumption Church would be founded.
Nicholas Krekel had come to O’Fallon on August 6, 1856, and would complete his log house just in time to bring his new wife Wilhelmina Moritz, the daughter of Casper and Sophie Moritz, to their new home on their wedding day, August 15, 1857. Wilhelmina “Mena” Moritz was the daughter of Casper and Sophie Moritz. Born in Bielefeld, Germany, July 17, 1838, she and her family came to America by way of New Orleans during the 1850s, and her family had settled in Florissant. This was a strong Catholic community that had begun coming to America in 1833, and most likely had many families that had connections all the way back to Germany.
Mena and Emma Krekel
Nicholas and Mena Krekel’s first child was a daughter who they named Emma, born in 1858. Nicholas had been appointed Stationmaster on the North Missouri Railroad which began in 1851. Soon after Nicholas was appointed Postmaster of O’Fallon on February 11, 1859, as all Station Agents were also Postmasters. That Christmas their next daughter Bertha was born. And by 1860, he was well on his way to establishing himself as a merchant and running the town’s new Post Office. A young 17 year-old German girl from Hannover named Donetta Kipp was a servant in their home.
In 1861, Nicholas had joined the Union Army, and was serving in Missouri’s Home Guard, in Captain Newstadter’s Company H, as a Private. His brother Arnold, who was a Lt. Colonel in the Home Guard, was not well liked either by some of the Krekel family’s neighbors, and this story which was shared by Julia Darst in the Keithley family papers at the St. Charles County Historical Society recounts a day in the life of O’Fallon during the Civil War: “They marched in front of us, on the road that ran past the house, and they did this regular patrol almost every day.” The Keithley farm was “on the main road” (today’s Main Street) to the south of O’Fallon. The Union soldiers were known as Krekel’s “Deutsch” and the “southern sympathizers like the Keithleys had very little respect. Never the less “Krekel was and there were more Union sympathizers in the O’Fallon area than Southern. He had the perfect right to march his contingent, up and down certain roads. Virtually every morning they did that march.”
The original plat for the City of O’Fallon can be found in the St. Charles County Recorder of Deeds, Plat Book 2, Page 38 & 39, with some interesting landmarks that I think everyone will enjoy. A Public Sale of Lots was held on July 22, 1870, and the plat was officially recorded in 1871.
This Original Plat of the City of O’Fallon shows the lot sold to the Archdiocese for Assumption Catholic Church on Lot B9
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Near the center of one of the largest cities in St. Charles County sits a quiet little plot of ground that transports a visitor to an earlier time when many of its residents were enslaved people. In the early 1800s, Samuel Keithly (1789-1870) came from Kentucky, and settled in St. Charles County, bringing his slaves. The father of a large family with seven children, several step-children, and many grandchildren, the family had other members who owned slaves as well. By the 1840s, the family owned hundreds of acres of land, and had purchased land near today’s O’Fallon, Missouri where Sage Chapel Cemetery lies.
Keithly was one of the largest slave owners in St. Charles County according to the U.S. Slave Schedules of 1850 and 1860. Among those slaves were John Rafferty and his sisters Ludy, Elsie and Lizzie according to oral history.
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’s first postmaster and Station Agent when the North Missouri Railroad came through in the 1850s. In 1855, a German born attorney named Arnold Krekel, purchased 320 acres of land on which he platted a town named O’Fallon, naming it after the railroad magnate John O’Fallon in hopes that it would become a stop on the westward push of progress. He set up his younger brother Nicholas as the Station Agent and Postmaster, giving him credit as the town’s founder. This created the unlikely neighbors of the Keithlys and the Krekels, with yet one common denominator. Both Samuel Keithly and Arnold Krekel owned slaves in 1860. Yet there their stories parted. Arnold Krekel, President of Missouri’s Constitutional Convention would go on to sign its’ Emancipation proclamation ending slavery in the State on January 11, 1865.
Samuel Keithly didn’t free any of his slaves. Oral tradition states that he gave the land that we call Sage Chapel Cemetery to his slaves, where they worshiped in a field of Sage. Among Samuel Keithly’s slaves was John Rafferty. According to Mary Stephenson, who is a descendant, John Rafferty and his sisters, Frances, Ludy, Elsie, and Lizzie had been born in Kentucky, and brought to Missouri. (These are among at least 17 burials at Sage Chapel Cemetery that we know experienced Missouri’s Emancipation Day on January 11, 1865.
When John Rafferty (Senior) passed away in 1881, his former master Samuel Keithly (Senior) had already passed away as well. Burials had already been taking place on the former Keithly plantation, on land that had been inherited and was by then owned by his daughter Mahala Keithly Castlio (1817-1896) and her husband Jasper N. Castlio. We do know that in 1881, Samuel Kiethly’s daughter Mahala and her husband Jasper Castlio legally transferred property that included a small church building of the African Methodist Episcopal Church on today’s Sonderen Avenue and the cemetery which lay at its southern terminus to three A.M.E. Trustees.
So on August 20th, in 1881, Mahala and her husband Jasper, transferred to three Trustees of the African Methodist Church, namely John Rafferty’s close friend Walter Burrel, Joel Patterson and Taylor Harris, for the use of the preachers of the African Methodist Episcopal Conference (headed by St. John’s A.M.E. Church in St. Charles Missouri) one acre of land, which became known as Sage Chapel Cemetery, so that these African-American burials could continue to take place. That same deed conveyed a half acre (with a building) to be used as a church. Then former slaves, like John Rafferty and Charles Letcher could continue to be buried where their ancestors had already lain for decades.
Preacher Jefferson Franklin Sage
At the same time there was a traveling minister with the A.ME. Church Conference named Jefferson Franklin Sage that preached along the route of today’s Interstate 70 between the city of St. Charles and further west in Jonesburg. He would preach there for many years before moving on to Kansas in the late 1890s. And by that time, there were two other black churches along today’s Sonderen Street, where a large African-American community lived.
Charles Letcher, ancestor of Mary Stephenson
Nearby, Wishwell Baptist Church was begun in 1891 and was a plant of Hopewell Baptist Church that had begun in the 1850s south of Wentzville on the Boone’s Lick Road. Wishwell was near the creek, on the east side of Sonderen, close to Sage Chapel Church. The other African-American Church was Craven’s Methodist, begun in 1871, near the corner of Elm and Sonderen. Next to Craven’s, on the corner, was the town’s African-American school, and across the street was the “Colored Odd Fellow’s” lodge that met in Willis Thornhill’s house until Henry Obrecht purchased the property in 1910. All of these lay on today’s Sonderen Avenue, which ran north to south from the Wabash Railroad to Sage Chapel Cemetery near the former Keithly plantation. This was also the dividing line between the property of the Krekel Addition and the former Keithly’s until 1951 and the City’s annexation of property. This was the line for segregation.
By the early 1900s, the early road to St. Peters, which led from the railroad in O’Fallon, passing Sage Chapel Church and the cemetery, became known as “the Hill” because of the African-American community that lived along it. There was the Thornhill house where the colored members of the Oddfellows met, the black school house, and the two other
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.
African-American churches. Many of those buried at Sage Chapel Cemetery were members of one of those three churches or of that community, that is today’s Sonderen Street.
By the late 1940s, many of the African Americans were moving away from O’Fallon in search of employment. The three churches would close, and have since even disappeared entirely, along with any records that may have existed.
Even though all three of these African-American Churches are no longer standing, and the buildings that once housed the black school and the Odd-Fellows lodge are largely
O’Fallon residents
remodeled, Sage Chapel Cemetery still exists. Significant in today’s world where such places are so often lost and forgotten. A peaceful and quiet testament to a difficult time and such families as Hayden, White, Edwards, Thomas, Rafferty and Ball. While many of the community of African Americans left O’Fallon in the late 1950s and early 1960s in search of better job opportunities for their families, some remained. And while many of Sage Chapel’s residents died living in St. Charles, St. Louis or even as far as New Orleans, they were brought home to Sage Chapel when they passed. Eventually all three churches would use Sage Chapel to bury their families.
a wonderful sign which was the original idea of Jim Pepper and it was constructed as an Eagle Scout Project by Jim’s grandson, Jackson Pepper.
Today, the cemetery is owned and maintained by the City of O’Fallon and has 117 documented burials of which only 37 have headstones (2018). Of those documented burials at least 17 of them were individuals born enslaved. They personally experienced Emancipation Day for Missouri’s slaves on January 11, 1865. Many of these people had difficult lives and would experience segregation their entire lives. The story of the people of Sage, tells us of a time period that today’s living cannot recall. Oral family histories continue to share stories of these people’s lives, and their tragic deaths.
In 2018, Sage Chapel Cemetery was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. One of the largest cities in Missouri, O’Fallon is setting an example of how to honor its history, even the more difficult stories. This in turn leads to a greater understanding and a richer dialogue for everyone. Thank you O’Fallon, Missouri, a great place to live! My website sagechapel.com shares the stories of the “People of Sage” who lie buried there because “As long as a name can be spoken, that person shall not be forgotten.” And it is only through a recognition of that past, that we can continue to build a better future for all generations to come. This is my website, and if you wish to contact me with any additional information or stories please use this contact form https://sagechapel.com/contact/.
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In 1846, when the first public school Board was created, and German born Arnold Krekel was a director, public education was only for white students. As plans for public schools took shape, there was a count of school age children made, which unfortunately did not include colored children. It was illegal to educate blacks under Missouri Law in 1847. It wasn’t until after Missouri’s Emancipation of its slaves on January 11, 1865 that things changed. In 1866, Jacob Weston was hired by the public school board and paid $20.00, in part payment, to teach the colored children in St. Charles. William Royce, began to collect subscriptions to build a public colored school, for the 167 colored children. The school board announced that school would start in December 1867. The African Church at Second and Pike Streets served as a school house and received $5 a month rent for that. By 1870, plans were being made to purchase the church.
At that same time, the Franklin School building was purchased from St. Louis University. For $3,500 the school board purchased everything, even the benches, in the school house that had been serving as a Catholic school for the St. Charles Borremeo parish since 1855 when it had been built. The colored school population was divided between the African Church and the Blue Ville School at Gallaher and Olive. In 1871, The colored Methodist Church was then purchased for $1250. In 1897, all colored children were being sent to what was Lincoln School at Second and Pike.
It wasn’t until 1901, that H.H. Peck spoke up about giving the African-American children, of which there were 80 at this time, a full day’s education. He also wanted another teacher since there were so many students, but that was denied. Instead on October 7, 1902 the school district opened the Franklin School to relieve the overcrowding at
Franklin School’s new addition in 1910
Lincoln School. It wasn’t until 1910 that the first mention of graduation exercises. In 1914, Lincoln was the white school and Franklin was all black, and an addition was built to accommodate all the former black Lincoln School students. The addition was made at a cost of $2,674. In 1921, the State Superintendent of Schools suggested that two years of high school be added. Improvements of more rooms at a cost of $11, 418.00 was done at this time as well. And in 1922, the first diploma was awarded to Clarence Thomas Shelton.
In 1925, the front of the school was modernized to today’s appearance. A lot was purchased for $7,500 to provide a playground for the students. In 1931, a third year was added to the high school, and in 1932 a fourth year was added. By this time, bus transportation covering 60-80 miles a day in its route, to bring African-American students from Jonesburg, Warrenton, Wright City, Wentzville and O’Fallon. It was great event when in June of 1933, Franklin School proudly graduated ten students from its four-year high school. In 1938, a gymnasium was built on the south side of the school building, where the former George Hellrich home had been, at the cost of $17,980.00. Another house on Hellrich’s property served as the Home Economics building.
Integration came to Missouri’s schools in 1954, and the lower grades were the first to be racially integrated. An era came to an end on a Thursday evening in June, the 2nd, in 1955 with the last graduation of Franklin High School. Hundreds of students from African-American communities in Warren, Lincoln, and St. Charles Counties had gained that important High School education in this building. Portions of its halls had served students since 1855, with a majority of its life as an all-black school. Student Mary Stephenson’s family had moved to O’Fallon from a farm in St. Paul, to attend school. She would pass school buildings that were a block from her home, to ride an early morning bus, to receive a high school education. Dedicated teachers, used all the materials they could find, and taught several different subjects. They insisted upon learning and the importance of education. This was a place that instilled pride in hundreds of former students that passed through its hallways. This sense of pride can still be seen today in the homes of these families. Their pride in their education still echoes in the hallways of their homes, and in their discussions with their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Some of the Information for this post came from the National Register Listing for the Frenchtown District and One Hundred years of Negro Education in St. Charles, Missouri by Stephen Blackhurst, Jr..
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