Fidelity, Missouri

Last time, I wrote about Medoc, Missouri, a small community in northwest Jasper County that used to be a thriving little town. Fidelity, located in the south-central part of Jasper County, is another small community in my general vicinity that used to be a thriving little town but no longer is.

A post office was established at Fidelity in 1855, and the town laid out in 1856 by William Cloe, who erected a large store building there. A large mill soon followed, and, according to Livingston's History of Jasper County, "for a while, this little village gave promise of being a town of importance." Indeed, the town thrived during the 1860s and early 1870s, before beginning a period of decline. According to North's 1883 Jasper County history, Fidelity was "famous" during the Civil War and for a number of years thereafter. 

Apparently, Fidelity was dominated by Southern sentiment during the war. I recall running onto a report by Union major Frank Eno during some Civil War research I was doing years ago, in which Eno said his soldiers had chased some Confederate guerrillas "into that misnomer Fidelity." 

Fidelity was the site of somewhat notorious incident in 1871 when a "Mr. Dye" got into an argument with S. Knowles and another man, T. M. Wakefield, tried to intervene. Turning his wrath on Wakefield, Dye struck the man in the back and, when he turned around, he stabbed him twice in the breast.

Knowles chased Dye into some woods and fired shots at him, but Dye escaped. Wakefield's wounds were painful but were not considered life-threatening. 

By 1883, when North's history was written, only a residence, a schoolhouse and a spring remained to mark the site of Fidelity. The town lost its post office in 1901, and Livingston mentioned in the early 1900s, like North before him, that virtually all signs of Fidelity had disappeared.

Actually, though, Fidelity still has a listed population of a couple of hundred even today. Located just south of I-44 on Highway 59, the town is so strung out, however, that it is hard to tell that it is anything more than just a few scattered homes and businesses along the road, and there is little to no evidence that it was ever a thriving village.