Cherokee-Lemp Historic District

The population of the United States and its territories was less than 34 million people in 1860 — and the nation was tearing itself apart along the lines of Free States and those that allowed slavery.

News of impending civil war pushed controversy over Charles Darwin's recently published On the Origin of the Species, and its theory of evolution, to the back pages. At the same time, the first Beadle dime novel — which would popularize characters like Deadwood Dick, Calamity Jane and Kit Carson — appeared on the book shelves.

On the eve of the Civil War, only a few roads crossed this area of open fields, clumps of woods, creeks and scattered farms. Though wild, this was a remarkably scholarly neighborhood.

Just to the south of Cherokee and Jefferson, the faculty of Concordia Lutheran Seminary was teaching philosophy, theology and the classics. The State of Missouri had chartered the fourteen year-old seminary as "Concordia College" in 1853.

In 1860, its staff included three professors of theology, two from Germany and one from Norway, and a professor of the German and English languages and of philosophy.

The census listed over 70 young scholars attending Concordia College. The scholars came from all over the Midwest, including the states of Ohio, Wisconsin,



Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and from the East Coast states of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Massachusetts and New York. The student body also included one student from Tennessee, one from Louisiana, and one born in Germany.

These young students were faced with a dilemma after the State of South Carolina seceded from the Union in December of 1860, and was followed by ten other states. They had to wonder if they should continue their studies, or join the armies of their native states fighting the battles of the Civil War.

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Show me all markers in:  St. Louis, MO  |  63118  |  Missouri  |  United States of America

2301 Cherokee
South St. Louis Architect
2225 Cherokee
2315-17 Cherokee
The Billiards Hall
2215 Cherokee
Bardenheier Row
If These Walls Could Talk? They Can.
The First Nickelodeon
2201 Cherokee

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