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Source: History of Northeast Missouri,
Edited by Walter Williams, Published by The Lewis Publishing Company,
Chicago Illinois 1913
Monroe County Article written by Thomas V. Bodine, Paris |
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| Closely identified with Monroe township, and associated with its growth and development, is Indian Creek township, home of the first Catholic colony to settle in Monroe county and which yet preserves both its racial and religious solidarity. Indian Creek is an inland township merely skirted by a railroad and there has been little perceptible change in it for fifty years. There history has unfolded evenly, without the too sudden exception, and in most respects it remains today pretty much as it was when the historic spire of St. Stephens, visible for miles across the rich prairie, was first reared by the devout Celts who came to make the rich land their own. The names of Yates, Parsons, Mudd, Buckman, Miles Lawrence and McLeod are connected with its material development, as well as its social and religious growth, and they are still associated with its life and its activities. Swinkey, or Elizabethtown, once a village of 350 has dwindled with the coming of rural routes, but at one time was an important trading center, laid out by a man of the same name in 1835 and subsequently changed to Elizabethtown, in honor of his first wife, whose name was Elizabeth. The history of St. Stephens church is not obtainable, but it is one of the oldest religious bodies in Monroe county, dating back to 1833. and has exercised a profound influence over the lives of the generations that have grown up within its shadows. Indian Creek township, if the legend be correct, has never had an inmate in the county infirmary, and for years elected neither constable nor justice of the peace, two facts showing the character and quality of the religion inculcated by the succession of good fathers who have ministered to the people of this little Arcady. All events in Indian Creek are reckoned from the destructive cyclone which occurred there March 10, 1876. and which practically destroyed the village of Elizabethtown, Historic St. Stephens church—the first house to be built—was crumpled up like a straw and of the entire town there remained, when its fury was spent, but four houses, among them the parochial residence, In all fourteen people were killed, the storm cutting a pathway of death and destruction practically through the entire township, and the little community never fully recuperated. St. Stephens was rebuilt, the new church being a beautiful building capable of seating eight hundred people, but was burned in 1907, being rebuilt in 1908-09 and dedicated by Archbishop John J. Glennon in one of the most notable services of the kind ever held in. this section of the state. Its present shepherd is Father Cooney. |
