Pennsboro, Missouri
Pennsboro is an unincorporated community in southern Dade County, in the U.S. state of Missouri.[1]
The community is located along Missouri Route 39 at the intersection of routes Z and K approximately three miles south of South Greenfield. Honey Creek flows past to the east and Limestone Creek to the west of the location.[2]
History
Pennsboro was founded in the 1880s, and named after William Penn, a Dade County pioneer.[3] A post office was established at Pennsboro in 1895, and remained in operation until 1931.[4]
Pennsboro was a station on the Greenfield & Northern Railroad from the time it was constructed in the early 1890s until the line was abandoned by the St. Louis-San Francisco Railroad in the mid-1930s.[5] Just prior to the abandonment, the depot was loaded in one piece onto a flat car at Pennsboro and transported down the line to Mt. Vernon, where it was replaced that community's depot that had recently been destroyed by fire.[6]
Pennsboro was also home to one of the early rural consolidated school districts in Missouri, when four one-room common school districts agreed to combine circa 1917 to form the "Dade County Consolidated School District No. 3 of Pennsboro," or Pennsboro C-3 for short. However, the one-room rural schools themselves were not consolidated until the mid-1930s; the state board of education excoriated the Pennsboro C-3 district in its 1932 annual report for maintaining what they termed the four inefficient one-room schools rather than consolidating students at a central point and allowing teachers to teach fewer grades. (Missouri Annual Report of Public Schools, 1932, pp. 391–404) The still standing brick structure was constructed when the one-room schools were finally consolidated, and remained in use as a school until the district consolidated with the Greenfield R-IV School District in the 1950s.[7]
Today
Pennsboro today is home to the Pennsboro Christian Church and a large cemetery, as well as several residences. The community's former two-room brick school building is still standing and in use as a community center.[8]
References
- U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Pennsboro, Missouri
- South Greenfield, MO, 7.5 Minute Topographic Quadrangle, USGS, 1956
- "Dade County Place Names, 1928–1945 (archived)". The State Historical Society of Missouri. Archived from the original on 24 June 2016. Retrieved 25 September 2016.CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown (link)
- "Post Offices". Jim Forte Postal History. Retrieved 25 September 2016.
- Ozark Region, Its History and Its People, Volume 2, page 149, 1917
- Michael A. Landis, Maintrack Media, Presentation to Lawrence County Historical Society, Mt. Vernon, Mo., November 2017
- Roof Replacement Progressing at Old Pennsboro School, The Vedette, Greenfield, Mo. Dec. 4, 2018
- The Vedette, Greenfield, Mo., Dec. 4, 2018