Between I-55 and Hwy. 21, just north of Antonia, lies Seckman Valley, and the name Seckman sounds through the valley like an echo. There is Seckman Road, Seckman schools, Seckman Lakes subdivision, Seckman Crossing subdivision, and even Rock Creek is known as Seckman Creek in the neighborhood.
The name goes back to Henry Seckman, who served as a “Jefferson County judge,” a position later called county commissioner. He served two terms from 1884-1888.
Henry Seckman was a notable person, a Republican and a member of the Masonic fraternity, and his first presidential vote was for Lincoln, according to the History of Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Crawford and Gasconade Counties.
“In 1884 Mr. Seckman was elected county judge of the First District and re-elected in 1886, with a greatly increased majority, being the first Republican to hold that office for a good many years. He is a man of good judgment and ability, and an earnest worker for the welfare of the county and of the Republican party,” the book said.
Judge Henry Seckman came to the U.S. when he was very young. Born in Prussia in 1838, he arrived in New Orleans with his parents, Mority and Elizabeth Seckman, in 1840 when he was about 2, according to the history.
The family traveled north up the Mississippi River to Missouri and lived for about a year in Warren County; then the family moved to the town of Washington in Franklin County where Henry Seckman’s father, a carpenter, died in 1852. Henry was about 14 at the time, the book said.
During the Civil War, in August of 1861, at the age of 23, Seckman enlisted in the Company A, of Fremont’s Body Guard (Union Calvary) and served until November of that same year. The calvary's job was to gather intelligence ahead of Maj. General John Fremont’s Army. The army’s mission was to run Maj. General Sterling Price’s Confederates out of the state, according to Wikipedia.
In 1863, Seckman married Elizabeth Reckman, a native of Galena, Ill., and they had seven children together. Seckman worked as a stair builder and traveled to several states in the region with his job. At some point, however, he moved to Jefferson County and he became more of a farmer than a carpenter because, according to the history, at the time he was serving as a judge he was known as “a prominent farmer and stock raiser of Rock Township.”
Seckman, Mo., was known as a place not only by name but by the U.S. Postal Service beginning in 1889. Henry Seckman became the postmaster of Seckman in 1891.
Property for Seckman School, a one room school house, was donated by a Charles Edinger, sometime prior to 1906, according to the history of the Fox School District posted on its website. Seckman School was located on a hillside in the Rock Creek Valley (near what is now the Mastodon Historic Site) and was named in honor of Henry Seckman. The school was closed in 1948 when the Fox School District was formed. The old school building still stands as a private residence.
Henry Seckman died March 17, 1906. His wife, Elizabeth, died in May of that same year. They are both buried in Antonia Cemetery, according to the Find a Grave website.
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