LOOKING BACK is a Leader online feature that highlights historic photos. Readers are invited to submit their historic Jefferson County photos for online publication.
Still standing at the corner of Third and Elm streets in Pevely is a version of this house, which was the home of, among other people, Charles Simcol Rankin, who is credited with laying out the town of Pevely in 1860 and was that city's first postmaster. He also ran a store in the area.
When he lived in the home, however, the area was not known as Pevely but was considered part of Herculaneum, said Nadine Garland of the Herculaneum Historical Society.
Rankin, who was born in 1807 in St. Louis, met a longtime Herculaneum merchant, William Glasgow, and the two formed a partnership, which was said to have been profitable for both men.
Rankin also was active in the Whig Party and was described as an ardent admirer of Henry Clay, a Whig who served as in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate with distinction. Clay also had three unsuccessful campaigns for president (in 1824, 1832 and 1844).
Rankin was a member of the Board of Directors for the St. Louis and Iron Mountain Railroad.
A history of Rankin noted, in the fashion of the day, that Rankin's fellow businessmen "learned to esteem him for the sterling qualities of integrity and honor, which marked his character in every department of life."
When Rankin died after a long illness in 1879, at his home, he had four daughters, all by his second wife, Sarah Lewis.
Garland noted that the pallbearers at Rankin's funeral included men whose names are prominent in Jefferson County history: Thomas Fletcher, John Fletcher, James Dunklin and a Dr. McNutt, to name a few.
When the home itself was built is unknown, but when a newspaper reporter visited the then-current residents of the home in 1958, they told her that the logs used to build the home were floated down the Mississippi River from Michigan about a century earlier. The logs were pulled from the Mississippi at Kimmswick, where they were sawed into lumber.
One of Rankin's daughters, Millie, was married in the house in 1887, to W.E. Dickey of Lutesville, Mo. (now Marble Hill).
Garland noted that the newly married couple left immediately after the ceremony and caught the 5 p.m. trail to Niagara Falls, which was an arduous trip in those days.
Rankin and his second wife, Sarah, are buried in Herculaneum in a cemetery dedicated to the town of Herculaneum in 1881 for use as a community cemetery.
The city of Herculaneum maintains Rankin Memorial Cemetery, a 1.87-acre site at the end of Brown Street near the old Douglass Elementary School building.
-- Steve Taylor
Send submissions (or if you have any information on this photo) to LOOKING BACK to nvrweakly@aol.com or bring or mail them to the Leader office, 503 N. Second St., Festus (P.O. Box 159, 63028). Please include your name, phone number, a brief description of what's in the photo and tell us how you came by it. Please also include when it was taken, where and by whom (if known). A new LOOKING BACK photo will be posted each week.
