St. Catharine, Missouri
St. Catharine, Missouri | |
|---|---|
 Location of St. Catharine in Missouri | |
| Coordinates: 39°47′42″N 92°59′40″W / 39.79500°N 92.99444°W | |
| Country | United States |
| State | Missouri |
| County | Linn |
| Area | |
| • Total | 0.74 sq mi (1.91 km2) |
| • Land | 0.73 sq mi (1.90 km2) |
| • Water | 0.00 sq mi (0.01 km2) |
| Elevation | 830 ft (250 m) |
| Population (2020) | |
| • Total | 78 |
| • Density | 106.41/sq mi (41.08/km2) |
| FIPS code | 29-64046 |
| GNIS feature ID | 2587111[2] |
Saint Catharine or St. Catharine is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in southeast Linn County, Missouri, United States.[2] Saint Catharine is located approximately four miles east of Brookfield on Missouri Route 11 in the Yellow Creek Township. The Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad passes the south side of the community.[3]
History
[edit]St. Catharine was founded in 1856, and is not named for Catherine of Alexandria, but instead for Mrs. Catherine Elliot, by her husband, William Elliot. Afterward, the word Saint, or "St." as it was written, was added to Catharine, "as a sort of joke, but as Mrs. Elliott remarked, she had no objection to being canonized as a saint, and the name became an established fact."[4][5]
A post office called Saint Catharine was established in 1859,[6] the same year that James Early White, born in 1804 near Dyke in Greene County, Virginia and closer to Nortonville in Albemarle, obtained a land patent for forty acres on October 11. He established a tobacco farm five miles north of the village. He became the first postmaster of the place on February 11, 1859.
He was the youngest of five boys born to James White and Susanna Bourne (there were four girls) on a farm along the Lynch River on the border between then Orange County and Albemarle County. His oldest brother Crenshaw White had established himself in Missouri, in adjacent Chariton County, more than a quarter century earlier, in 1825. Another brother, Overton White, had drowned nearby, in the rushing Yellow Creek on his way to his wedding in the spring of 1837. Another older brother, Anderson White, remained East, on a tobacco plantation near the Blue Ridge in Free Union in Albemarle County.
White family
[edit]James Early White, so named for the related First family of Virginia Confederate General Jubal Anderson Early, brought his wife Matilda Rosenberger, born in Luray, Shenandoah County, Virginia, in 1810, and eight children from Virginia where he owned two slaves, according to the 1850 census and a family history. A few years after establishing a farm north of St. Catharine, two of their sons died in 1864, within a month of one another; another son spent time in the state asylum; a daughter died as well. Two daughters, Matilda Elizabeth Kelley and Cynthia Ann Black, and son Wesley Anderson White, remained and raised families. Another son, James E. White Jr., joined the 26th Regiment of Illinois Volunteers and later the 6th Connecticut, participated in Sherman's march to the sea, and in 1865, he asked the Illinois governor to pardon him for desertion, which he did. The U.S. Army ignored the request.[7]
J. E. White Jr. and his wife Caroline Hortense Jackson, a descendant of Elizabeth Fones, took over the homestead five miles north of St. Catharine in 1881, now 160 acres. A schoolhouse, called the White School, was erected on a corner of their land. They raised five girls and five boys.[7] Two of their daughters married and died young: one of a self-induced abortion, the other of syphilis in the Illinois State Asylum and Hospital for the Insane.[8] Five sons and three daughters, including Olive Pearl Lineberry, married and had families of their own. The eldest daughter Gertrude Marie married and moved to Oklahoma.
American civil war
[edit]In 1861, a farmer named James Maddox shot a hole through the American flag, raised at St. Catharine. "W. E. Crandall denounced the act in vigorous terms" and his threat to "take it down or tear it down was met by an equal determination to stand by the old flag." Crandall then took the flag down, "amid pretty heavy threats that it should not be done, and amid a silence profound, walked off with it."
In the summer 1863, near St. Catharine, a stranger suspected of being "a spy for the bushwhackers was taken into the Yellow Creek timber" and hung.
There were two Confederate raids made on St. Catharine: the first in August 1862 when seven raiders "robbed F. S. Black of about $1,000 in money and goods; W. T. Snow, of about $400; and the Salisbury Brothers and others suffered to a limited extent" though no one was hurt. The second raid occurred in September 1864, "in broad daylight," when about 15 - 20 raiders, under the command of Lieutenant Howard Bragg (under Capt. Clifton D. Holtzclaw), robbed generally, and took two men--one of whom was paroled, the other shot and buried by "citizens at the Corinth cemetery, in Chariton county." Also: "James Baxter, a blacksmith, was shot in the leg, a boy carrying water seriously wounded with a rifle-ball, and Lafayette Brashears wounded in the left leg with buckshot."[9] James and Matilda's youngest son died September 4, possibly related to the raid. He was 19 years old.
Business (historical)
[edit]"The town is rather handsomely located with extensive prairies surrounding it, and in the distance rise the hills and low bluffs which line the banks of the East and West Yellow Creeks, which streams are, on the west about three miles, and on the east about one and a half miles from the town," according to a history.
There were two general stores, a hardware, stove and tinware shop, a notion and confectionary store, a gunsmith, blacksmith shops, wagon shops, a millinery, a shoe shop, a saw mill, harness shop, two coal mines, physician, railroad and express agent and the St. Catharine Hotel.[9]
A post office was established at Hybrid, Missouri, north of St. Catharine and closer to the White homestead, near the Little Yellow Creek, but closed in 1905.
The Saint Catharine post office remained in operation until 1993.[5]
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Churches
[edit]In the 19th century, there were several Methodist Episcopal churches, several Congregational churches, and the Church of the United Brethren. The St. Catharine United Methodist Church formed in 1890 and closed in 2008. The building no longer stands.[10]
Demographics
[edit]| Census | Pop. | Note | %± |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 78 | — | |
| U.S. Decennial Census[11] | |||
References
[edit]- ^ "ArcGIS REST Services Directory". United States Census Bureau. Retrieved September 5, 2022.
- ^ a b c U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: St. Catharine, Missouri
- ^ Bucklin, MO, 7.5 Minute Topographic Quadrangle, USGS, 1949
- ^ Eaton, David Wolfe (1916). How Missouri Counties, Towns and Streams Were Named. The State Historical Society of Missouri. pp. 188.
- ^ a b "A Directory of Towns, Villages, and Hamlets of Missouri". thelibrary.org. Retrieved September 4, 2024.
- ^ "Post Offices". Jim Forte Postal History. Retrieved October 29, 2016.
- ^ a b "The war after: How my great-great grandfather deserted the Union army and earned an honorable discharge". WHYY. Retrieved September 3, 2024.
- ^ Research conducted by Michael Carolan.
- ^ a b Brewer, Luther Albertus, and Wick, Barthinius Larson. History of Linn County, Iowa: From Its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time. United States, Unigraphic, 1913.
- ^ "UMData | Churches". www.umdata.org. Retrieved September 4, 2024.
- ^ "Census of Population and Housing". Census.gov. Retrieved June 4, 2016.
Municipalities and communities of Linn County, Missouri, United States | ||
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| Footnotes | ‡This populated place also has portions in an adjacent county or counties | |
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