Missouri Osage warrior painted by George Catlin early 1800s Public domain image

Fifteen miles from Arnold, some folks believe the unincorporated House Springs area is haunted by ghosts of massacred pioneers, dead children, murderers, thieves and Native American Indians.

It just might be. Why?

House Springs history is fraught with tragedy, sadness, bankruptcy, violence, poverty, illness and disappointment – not to mention unnatural death. Originally named House Spring, House Springs is for certain very much different today than it was years ago. Yet people still wonder.

In 1673, French Jesuit priest Jacques Marquette and fur trader Louis Jolliet canoed thru the Meramec River’s confluence with the Mississippi River near Arnold. Marquette later drew a map naming both a Native American Indian tribe and the territory Missouri.

In 1682 French explorer La Salle claimed the entire Mississippi River basin for France, calling it the Louisiana Territory. Pioneers were permitted to settle if they cleared land and built a dwelling. President Thomas Jefferson purchased the entire territory in 1803, ordering Lewis and Clark with 46 men on a keelboat to find the Pacific Ocean.

House Family Deaths

A pioneer named James Head settled in the House Springs area in 1795. He named a tributary  of the Big River “Head’s Creek.” Mr. Head, about whom little is known, sold his land to German immigrant Adam House, who was lured by its river, natural spring, fertile soil and abundant sugar maple trees.

House built a cabin near the spring that, regrettably, was a rest stop for Osage Native Americans traveling to St. Louis to trade animal furs. History is unclear about why Osage warriors brutally murdered Adam House and one of his sons, yet they did. Apparently, when he saw the Osage warriors House sent two of his three children to get help as his youngest son Jacob stayed with him. Here is an official report about the horrid fate of Adam House and young son, as translated from the original French dated  March 19, 1800:

“I, Pierre Treget, commandant at Carondelet, pursuant to orders from Don Carlos Dehault Delassus, commandant at St. Louis, repaired to the Renault Forks, with the few militiamen I could assemble, in pursuit of the Indians. On reaching the place, I found an old man dead, head cut off and laid at his side, scalp taken and body full of wounds from musket shots; and a few paces off, a boy eight or nine years old, head cut off and lying near him, face smeared with blood, with a small piece of maple sugar in his mouth, no wound on his body from either musket or knife; a dead cow, one horn carried off, dead calf, head cut off, beds in the house cut to pieces, utensils broken and strewed about the house. Ascertained that the murders had been committed by the Osages. Buried the bodies.”

When word spread that Osage warriors murdered House and his young son, settlers nearby named the area House Spring to honor them.  In 1826, when Jefferson Barracks was established about 30 miles from House Spring, the U.S. Army began to vanquish native Americans. The vanquishing intensified when former general Andrew Jackson was elected President in 1828. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 promoted by Jackson was enacted by congress and harshly enforced by the U.S. Army.

Town of Demaree

Cornelius Demaree house built 1837 shown soon before demolition in 2017. Historic Barnhart-Imperial Facebook page photo.

In 1837 Cornelius H. Demaree moved from Kentucky to buy House Spring land parcels. He became Jefferson County’s first postmaster and a merchant with his general store Demaree & Co. Mr. Demaree had high hopes for getting rich by creating a town but he bankrupted in 1857, forcing sale of his land on Jefferson County’s Courthouse steps. Early pioneer Patrick Byrne of Byrnes Mill handled Demaree’s estate.

Ginger Brickey, senior genealogy clerk at the Northwest Branch of Jefferson County Library whose local family dates to about 1800, notes that In 1860, English-born physician George A. Smith purchased the property from Demaree’s estate. That  year, Smith renamed the House Spring village Demaree, platting along the west side of what is now State Route MM.

Brickey asserts, “Dr. Smith really oversold the place. He boasted about building a gravel road all the way to St. Louis and making Demaree a new Jefferson County seat, yet none of that happened.” The gravel roadway Dr. Smith envisioned is now Missouri Route 30. According to Missouri Preservation, Cornelius Demaree’s house was built in House Spring near Main Street and State Route MM:

The Burgess House in House Springs built in 1883. Many years later the land hosted a Hardees Restaurantt. Jefferson County Library photo

“The building was originally a log structure completed circa 1837. Mr. Demaree lived on the several-acre plot with his family until his death in 1857. By 1860 the property was auctioned off in parcels by Dr. George Smith, who marketed the plots as ‘The Town of Demaree,’ claiming that there were already fifteen buildings in the town. According to probate records at the time, these buildings included the dwelling, a stable, a blacksmith shop, and several well houses. Eventually the Demaree family disappeared from the area and the town was re-named for the House family House Springs. Over the years the Demaree house was expanded from cabin to a two story center hall with a columned two-story gallery extending the entire length of the house’s principal façade. This house was important in the history and settlement of this area in Jefferson County.”

According to the Historical Barnhart/Imperial organization, the Adam House cabin stood 50 yards north of the spring. When a large home was built near this spring in 1883 by Edward Burgess and his wife Josephine Cromwell a headless skeleton was unearthed – presumably, the bones of decapitated Adam House or his son. The bones were boxed and re-buried in a location unknown.

The historic Burgess House built on Adam House’s land was sold to another family in 1942. The Burgess site is near the intersection of Highway 30 and Highway W that runs northwest to Eureka and Highway MM. After a losing battle by preservationists in House Springs, the old Burgess home, shed and barn were demolished.

Civil War Ghosts

Civil War Bushwhackers supporting the Confederacy holding pistols. Wikipedia Commons photo

It’s hard to know how many Bushwhackers and Jayhawkers may have died fighting near House Springs during the Civil War. Bushwhackers and Jayhawkers rampaged across Jefferson County killing each other during that tragic conflict. Civil War guerillas were generally not enlisted in military forces on either side but sympathized with one cause or another. Many deadly skirmishes occurred between those guerilla fighters. Some fatalities are presumed buried in graves or unmarked caves. The graveyard nearest to House Springs at St. Martins United Church of Christ in High Ridge didn’t open until 1869, four years after the war ended.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that after the Civil War  “Main Street in House Springs became lined with stores, a tavern, a grocery store… The old building sits in a line with some of the oldest buildings in Jefferson County.” A two-story frame building on Main Street became the mercantile store of J.E.C. Wilson. The building was a tavern called Votaw’s Saloon…that supposedly dates pre-Civil War and its bricks were allegedly made by slaves in the area. There was also a blacksmith shop and a grocery store. Valentine Leight General Store, also known as V. Leight New Store, Leight Mercantile Co., and Garden of Eva, also were historic general stores in House Springs. The commercial structures were built in three stages between 1894 and 1910 with Late Victorian style details.

In 2012 the Red Brick Saloon hosted the Red Brick Sporting Goods Store . Jefferson County Library photo

A huge fire on October 14, 1940, totally destroyed the Charles Boemler Store in House Springs burning down the store, U.S. post office and Brimmer’s Funeral Parlor, likely containing caskets of dead people. Yet news of the fire and charred caskets was eclipsed by news that an ancient Native American burial ground with “cist” graves was found. The cist graves each had a single body placed in a hole covered with stone, according to the Jefferson County Leader. A longtime local resident whose two great grandmothers were Native Americans reported that a large camp of Indians lived along the Big River in the early 1800s. That area beside the Big River was rich in Native American artifacts. The name of the road that runs along Head’s Creek near the spring was changed to Indian Springs.

Ginger Brickey, senior genealogist at Jefferson County Library, concludes, “There were definitely many historic tragedies and killings in this area and if there are stories of hauntings and ghosts going back in history it would not be surprising.” Indeed, it would not be surprising.