October 2, 2019
Breathing life into the past
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Features
The Boone-Duden Historical Society will host a cemetery tour on Oct. 6 at Francis Howell Cemetery, located in Busch Wildlife Area past the Missouri Conservation Department office.
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Boone-Duden Historical Society hosts annual cemetery tour where local performers recall lives and stories from St. Charles County’s past By Brett Auten It will be history in the flesh as the lives and stories from St. Charles County’s past are given a breath of air. The third annual Boone-Duden Historical Society cemetery tour will be held on Sunday, Oct. 6 beginning at 2 p.m. This year, the featured cemetery will be the Francis Howell Cemetery (previously known as the Fitz Cemetery) which is located in Busch Wildlife Area past the Missouri Conservation Department office. This will be the third such tour put on by the group as previous inclinations were held in 2017 at the United Church of Christ Cemetery in Femme Osage and in 2018 at the Thomas Howell Cemetery.
“The Francis Howell Cemetery is intriguing to me because it has sort have been left behind for 50 years,” Penny Pitman, a Boone-Duden Historical Society member, said. “There is just an enormous amount of history there.” The Francis Howell cemetery features 161 graves, including some of the region’s earliest pioneers and settlers, many of whom arrived before Missouri Statehood in 1821, and many who arrived while this area was Spanish territory. The Boone-Duden cemetery tours are more than just an informational walkabout. Figures from the past are represented by club members (or member’s spouses or friends) who relish the role and this form of storytelling. The characters represent
people who settled the area in the 18th century through the mandatory removal of all citizens in 1941 from 18,000 acres that had been home to families for generations, to build the TNT Plant for World War II munitions manufacturing. Among the characters included in the Frances Howell Cemetery are Francis Howell, Sarah Johnson, Fortunatus Boone Castlio, O.E Bacon, J.C. Pitman and others who will speak in costume and tell stories of their lives and their times. Information and research for the characters are usually done by members Bob Brail and Cathy Schoppenhorst. “You get a real concept of the people who were of the time and you get to hear their story through them,” Pitman said. “This See ‘PAST’ page 2
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