By Karen Cernich, Record Staff Writer
Standing inside the old Augustus Grabs House and Store along Main Street in Marthasville, Cathie Schoppenhorst smiled as she pointed out the building was used as the post office in the early 1800s when Daniel Boone lived in the area.“So there is a real chance Daniel Boone stepped in this building,” she said.Decades before Marthasville was founded in 1817, European-Americans began settling here. The Lewis and Clark Expedition came through on its quest, stopping at the village of La Charrette in 1804 and 1806.A few years later, Boone became a resident, living in the area from 1813 until he died in 1820. He was originally buried near Marthasville, and a large stone still marks the site along Boone Monument Road. Marthasville is known as “the last home of Daniel Boone,” and Schoppenhorst noted an ad in one of the St. Louis area newspapers reported that Boone had unclaimed mail in Marthasville. “So we know he actually received mail here,” she remarked.Marthasville has been celebrating its history these last couple of weeks as the town approaches the 200th anniversary of its founding.A bicentennial committee led by Schoppenhorst and the Rev. Don Deeker held cemetery tours of St. Paul’s United Church of Christ last Sunday, May 28, and the Sunday before that, May 21, Missouri State Parks offered motorized tram rides on the 3.5-mile stretch of the Katy Trail between the Marthasville trailhead and the Peers Store.The big bicentennial celebration, the Heritage Festival, will be held June 16-18 with activities at five locations around town. See sidebar for more details. Town named after founder’s wifeBefore the town of Marthasville was established on the Missouri River bluffs, the property was part of a Spanish land grant made to William Ramsey. In 1816, Ramsey sold the land to Dr. John Young, who had come from Kentucky.Young had the land surveyed in 1817 and platted into 123 lots located on North, Main and South streets between First and Sixth streets.“He offered lots for sale, but didn’t sell very many initially. He traded four of them for a horse,” said Schoppenhorst.Young, who named the town Marthasville in honor of his first wife, Martha Fuqua, sold most of the remaining lots to Harvey Griswold, who came to the area in 1819.The Griswold House is still standing. It is the big brick house located across from Marthasville Elementary.Griswold served as a merchant, the postmaster, justice of the peace and even a banker.“He financed everyone’s sales of lots, and when necessary, he foreclosed and made money on it, and then sold it again,” said Schoppenhorst.Griswold sold to Adams, who died a short time later of cholera. That’s when Grabs bought it.“Grabs is considered to be the first follower of Gottfried Duden,” said Schoppenhorst. “Grabs came here in 1830, checked things out, went back to Germany, then came back and set up a business in Washington.“He was flooded out in 1844, and the owner of this store here (Adams) died of cholera in 1844, so the property became available. Grabs bought it, ran the store, and his daughter had a school upstairs.”Like Griswold before him, Grabs, in addition to being a merchant, served as a justice of the peace and postmaster. The property was passed down through several generations of the family. The last descendant was Helen Rusche, and when she died, she donated the now historic Grabs House and Store to the city.‘Situated on a beautiful ridge, commanding an elegant view’Gottfried Duden, who lived in the Dutzow area from 1824 to 1827 and whose report on the region launched the immigration of waves of Germans to Missouri, is said to have made the claim that Marthasville was actually poorly located for a community and would never thrive.“It’s in his letters,” said Schoppenhorst. “This was an Anglo-American city for a long time,” she noted. “The Germans were all around, but they mostly lived on farms. They were agricultural people. It was a long time before Germans were living in town.”A newspaper clipping from the Missouri Gazette described the property this way:“The subscriber has laid out a town, on the Missouri bluff, about half a mile from the river and (La) Charrette old village . . . It is situated on a beautiful ridge, commanding an elegant view of the river, and containing two springs of as good and lasting water as ever ran from the earth.”Town shaped by immigration, railroad, floodsSince Marthasville was founded in 1817, nothing has shaped the community more over the last 200 years than immigration, the coming of the railroad and numerous floods of the property, said the Rev. Deeker.Although Marthasville began as an Anglo-American town, by the 1880s it was considered one of the most German towns in the state, the Rev. Deeker noted.Then when the MKT railroad came in the 1890s, businesses sprang up around it.“We became a railroad town. This became a prominent point for shipping cattle, grain and everything else. There was hardly any downtown before that,” the Rev. Deeker said.What had been fields used for logging and farming made way for businesses and merchants, said Schoppenhorst.The outbreak of World War I and America’s entrance into the war brought changes to Marthasville’s four churches — Marthasville German Evangelical Church (which later became St. Paul’s UCC), Northern Methodist, Southern Methodist and an African Methodist Church.“They stopped using full-time German language,” said the Rev. Deeker. “We were at war with Germany. We wanted to prove our loyalty.”The population at the time was a few hundred people, said the Rev. Deeker. Since 1817, Marthasville has experienced more than a half-dozen significant floods: In 1844, 1903, 1951, 1973, 1986, 1993 and 1995.“These were floods that had a major impact,” said the Rev. Deeker. “After the 1986 flood, the composition of downtown really changed, stores closed or relocated.”Yet through every flood, the community worked together to rebuild, making it even stronger. Country living, big city conveniencesToday, Marthasville’s population, according to the 2010 census, is 1,136. That’s only about 400 more than in the early 1980s when the Rev. Deeker moved to town, but it’s a noticeable increase when you look around the community.“People have found out that Marthasville is a great place to live,” the Rev. Deeker remarked, noting that new homes have sprung up to meet the increased demand. “It’s also become a bedroom community for people who want to live here but who work somewhere else.”As a native of Marthaville who grew up there in the 1950s and ’60s, Kathryn (Lichtenberg) Branson remembers Marthasville as a safe, close-knit community where kids could explore the town like they were in their own backyards.“We rode our bikes to Dutzow before there was a Katy Trail and had fun,” said Branson. “We rode our bikes all over town. I rode my pony all over town. You had the freedom to run. Everybody knew everybody and looked out for everybody.”With a population of just a few hundred people, Marthasville in the 1950s was a little Norman Rockwell-esque.“You couldn’t get in to a lot of trouble because everybody knew who your parents were and would tell on you,” Branson remarked. “As I look back now, I remember always feeling very safe and free. When I went to college, I remember feeling more confined in a dorm than I ever had felt at home,” she added.Schoppenhorst, who married into a family that had been in Marthasville since 1833, but had only moved to the community herself in 1982, said she thinks of Marthasville as country living with big city conveniences, including top medical services, industry, banks, schools and athletic organizations. She laughed remembering her first encounter with native residents.“Who do you belong to?” they asked her.While some people might find that kind of question off-putting, she found it very welcoming.“It made me feel like they wanted to know who I was and get to know me,” said Schoppenhorst. “This is a very welcoming community,” the Rev. Deeker agreed, “but you have to meet people halfway. You can’t just stay in your house all of the time.”Schoppenhorst said the proof of how much the people of Marthasville like to socialize and support each other is seen every month at the concerts in the park sponsored by the Warren County Fine Arts Council on the fourth Friday.“There are three main towns in Warren County — Warrenton, Wright City and Marthasville, and Marthasville has the best turnout,” she said. “It’s always a big party. Everybody is visiting with each other, often for an hour or more after the band has finished playing.”The cover of the the 2017 Marthasville bicentennial calendar being sold by the committee features this image of the downtown area in the late 1800s, right around the time the railroad came to town. Businesses were popping up to serve the new demands. Submitted photo.
