OLDEST-- Presbyterian Church West of Mississippi River - Superlatives on Waymarking.com

Before Missouri was a state,there were two churches in the town of Caledonia in the Bellevue Valley in what today is Washington County Missouri. First organized was the Methodist's church in 1810. They were able to assist the Presbyterians whose church was organized on August 3, 1816 by a colony from North Carolina of Scotch-Irish that settled in and around Caledonia. In 1871 the present brick structure was built after fire consumed the original log church. The building was dedicated in August 1872. Bellevue Presbyterian Cemetery about a mile out of town served as the burying ground for both Methodists and Presbyterians until the Methodists built their own cemetery twenty-five years later.

Caledonia was founded and laid out by Alexander Craighead, a Scotch-Irish immigrant who named it what was known as the Roman name for Scotland.

Thomas Flanders traveled to Caledonia in 1992 in preparation for its listing in the National Register of Historic Places. He noted that "the houses, streetscapes. and landscapes they constructed remain, in great measure unchanged from the nineteenth century."

(Reference: The Kith and Kin of Caledonia, by Thomas Flanders, Ozarks Watch, Vol. V, No. 4, Spring 1992 from Missouri Historic Towns, Explore Caledonia Missouri History, River Valley Region Association website listed below)

Type of documentation of superlative status: Goodspeed's History of Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Crawford,and Gasconade Counties Missouri 1888 Location of coordinates: See Above Web Site: [Web Link]

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