Germantown, Missouri

Germantown is a small community in Deepwater Township in southwest Henry County, Missouri. Today, about all that remains of the place are a church, a couple of businesses, and a few residences, but at one time, it was a thriving little village.

Founded in 1857, Germantown was named for its high concentration of residents who were German immigrants or of German descent. The current church at Germantown is the St. Ludger Catholic Church, which was established by German Catholics in the town's early days. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

One of the more interesting episodes of the Civil War in Henry County occurred in March of 1864 in the Germantown neighborhood. On the evening of the 26th, a party of guerrillas came into Deepwater Township and started “menacing the citizens and committing the most outrageous acts of plunder.” A citizen named Short hurried to the Federal camp at Germantown, to report the situation, and a Union detachment under Sergeant John W. Barkley was dispatched to the vicinity of the trouble.

When he arrived on the scene around midnight, Barkley learned that, after Short’s departure, another citizen of the neighborhood had shot and severely wounded one of the bushwhackers and that they had fled the area, taking the injured man with them. The Federals pursued and soon caught up with three of the Rebels at the house of man named Dunn. After an all-night stand-off, the three guerrillas, including the wounded man, surrendered and were taken back to the Federal camp at Germantown.

The two uninjured Rebels were given a drumhead court martial. Civilians testifying before the tribunal identified the two men as part of a band that had committed all sorts of depredations in their neighborhood the previous winter, and the two guerillas were convicted and sentenced to die by firing squad. The condemned men knelt down beside the grave that had been prepared for them and "met death with a dauntlessness worthy of a better cause."

The wounded Rebel was spared because of his serious condition, but the Union commander at Germantown vowed to execute him if he recovered. For a more detailed account of this episode, check out by book The Civil War on the Lower Kansas-Missouri Border https://amzn.to/3L13BOF.

After the Civil War, Germantown prospered for a few years and seemed to be on the road to becoming a fairly substantial town. However, when a railroad was constructed through the area in the early 1870s, it bypassed Germantown. The town of Montrose grew up along the railroad about four miles southeast of Germantown, and several businesses and quite a few residents of Germantown packed up and moved to the new town. Germantown began a rather precipitous decline, and by the mid-1870s, it had already lost its post office. By the late 1880s, it wasn't much bigger than it is today, not much more than a wide place in the road.