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

  1. ↑ U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Pennsboro, Missouri
  2. ↑ South Greenfield, MO, 7.5 Minute Topographic Quadrangle, USGS, 1956
  3. ↑ "Dade County Place Names, 1928–1945 (archived)". The State Historical Society of Missouri. Archived from the original on June 24, 2016. Retrieved September 25, 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  4. ↑ "Post Offices". Jim Forte Postal History. Retrieved September 25, 2016.
  5. ↑ Ozark Region, Its History and Its People, Volume 2, page 149, 1917
  6. ↑ Michael A. Landis, Maintrack Media, Presentation to Lawrence County Historical Society, Mt. Vernon, Mo., November 2017
  7. ↑ Roof Replacement Progressing at Old Pennsboro School, The Vedette, Greenfield, Mo. Dec. 4, 2018
  8. ↑ The Vedette, Greenfield, Mo., Dec. 4, 2018

37°19′38″N 93°50′03″W / 37.32722°N 93.83417°W / 37.32722; -93.83417


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