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Welcome to Perry County
Missouri Genealogy Research
Bey Building circa 1880
My name is Bob
Jenkins and I created this
website to provide genealogy
information and links to genealogy
information to assist people in
researching
their Perry County Missouri
ancestors.
I would appreciate any
contribution that you would like to
make to this site:
biographies, obituaries, birth,
marriage, death info, grave info,
photographs....etc
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Use the box below to
search
for Perry
County Data
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Brief
History:
The first American settlers to
Perry County arrived during the latter
half of the 1790s and claimed rich land in
Bois
Brule Bottom. These Americans
organized the region's original Baptist
Church in 1807. In the early 19th century,
a
second group of American settlers
crossed the Mississippi River to take
advantage of Spanish land offers. These
were Roman Catholics of English
stock from north-central Kentucky. They
had originally come from Maryland to
escape religious discrimination and
prided themselves on being descendants of
Lord Baltimore's original colonists.
The first of these to settle
permanently in the future Perry County was
Isidore Moore. He arrived in 1801 and
became a patriarch of the area, and
founded Tucker's Settlement. Others soon
followed whose family names
predominated the decades: Tucker,
Fenwick, Cissell, Hayton, Riney, Hamilton,
Layton, Manning, and Hagan. Most
of these settled in the uplands
around Perryville in a place called the
Barrens because of its open land. Another
Maryland Catholic, Joseph Fenwick,
established the short-lived Fenwick
Settlement at the mouth of Brazeau Creek
in the Brazeau Bottoms.
When the region was transferred to
American sovereignty in 1803–1804, the
Barrens became part of the Louisiana
Territory. Prior to the admission of
Missouri to statehood in 1821, several new
migrations altered the religious
composition of the future county. In
1817, a large group of Presbyterians from
North Carolina settled in the
neighborhood of Brazeau, an area
roughly bounded by the Mississippi River
and the Cinque Hommes Creek and
Apple Creek. These settlers
organized a church in 1819. They were soon
followed by Methodists from the same
state whose family names live on,
like Abernathy, Farrar, and Rutledge. In
1826, they built their first log meeting
house, which was later replaced by
York Chapel.
Until 1821, the Barrens region
formed the southern portion of Ste.
Genevieve County. When Missouri was
granted
statehood, Perry County was
organized out of the parent district. It
was divided into three townships: Brazeau,
Cinque Hommes, and Bois Brule. Their
boundaries, following natural geographical
features, were quite irregular. In
1856, the borders were made
symmetrical and two new townships, St.
Mary's and Saline, were added.
After 1821, the descendants of
French colonial families from Ste.
Genevieve trickled into Perry County, and
in the
middle of the next decade, their
ranks swelled by immigrants from France
itself. They settled on the lands that
were
near the present city of Perryville.
At about the same time, a small group of
Flemings settled in the northeastern part
of the county, with the present town
of Belgique as their center. There were
also Swiss in the same area.
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