Priest established Glennonville and helped bring electricity to the Bootheel.
They came from all walks of life, those “pioneers of power” who helped establish Missouri’s electric cooperatives. Farmers, small business owners, teachers, county Extension agents and homemakers were among those who signed the articles of incorporation to bring rural people out of the darkness.
But one electric cooperative director stood out from the rest gathered around the board table by his black cassock and white clerical collar. He is remembered today not just for his efforts to establish Ozark Border Electric Cooperative but also for his devotion to the community he carved out of the wilderness in southeast Missouri. The Rev. Frederick F. Peters, a Catholic priest, would serve on his co-op’s board from its establishment in 1938 until his health forced his resignation in 1955.
Long before Concern for Community became the seventh cooperative principle, Father Fritz, as he was known to his parishioners, put the principle into practice by turning what had been swampland into the village of Glennonville. He came to the United States from Germany with his family in 1888 when he was 15 years old. His father had died, and his mother decided leaving Germany offered the best chance for success for her family.
They settled in the village of Aholt, located in the bottoms between the Missouri and Chariton rivers northwest of Glasgow. This tiny Catholic community produced two priests: Frederick and his brother John.
While John would spend his priesthood in St. Louis, the Archdiocese of St. Louis had different plans for his brother. Frederick was sent to Jefferson City to serve as an associate priest at St. Peter Catholic Church located next to the state Capitol. Here he would become the first member of the clergy to minister behind the walls of the notorious Missouri State Penitentiary. He also convinced the state to establish a chapel in the penitentiary.
Soon the young priest would be given a task that would take him deep into the wilderness of the Missouri Ozarks. In May 1905, he was sent south as a missionary for Catholics living in Thayer, Cabool and Brandsville. He had barely settled into his new role when he was again summoned to St. Louis.
Archbishop John J. Glennon had a new challenge for the young priest. He wanted him to establish a colony for German Catholics on a tract of land the archdiocese purchased in Dunklin County. He set out on Nov. 3, 1905, to explore the 12,500-acre tract and determine whether the project could be accomplished.
The priest’s memoirs relate his dismay at what he found: “Continuing through the woods, we came to the famous old town, Paragon, a remnant of a once industrious sawmill town. There were four small box shanties through which the wind played at will, the rain dashed without much hindrance and the sun cast your shadow upon the floor.
“There was the old sawmill almost without a covering and the heavy machinery had sunk through the rotted logs into Mother Earth. With this as a foundation, I was to start a new town, a colony for Catholics.”
His report to the archbishop related that while a colony could be established here, it would be expensive and require considerable work. “There were no accommodations of any kind. There were no roads, no houses, no shelters,” he wrote.
Despite the dismal report, the archbishop urged the Rev. Peters to move ahead, saying, “My dear father, I have asked you to undertake that work because I have found you in my estimation the most fitted and competent priest to do so. I know it will entail work that is not perhaps becoming a priest, yet I would kindly ask you to undertake the work and to reap the benefit as long as you will.”
The Herculean task began a week later with two men from Malden joining the Rev. Peters. They dug the sawmill out of the mud and began sawing lumber for houses. The priest soon lured a handle mill and a barrel stave business to the colony he renamed Glennonville. These businesses provided jobs for those brave enough to settle there.
Settlers, including the priest’s mother and two brothers, began to arrive first from Cole and Howard counties, then from as far away as Kentucky and Indiana. They cleared land, hauling the timber to the sawmill where the priest-turned-sawyer singlehandedly cut more than a million board feet of lumber. This was used to build new homes in addition to a church, two grade schools and a high school offering a full four years of education.
The church was named St. Teresa in honor of his mother. Both the church and school are still active today.
In addition to serving as chief sawyer, Father Fritz was also the colony’s chief medical officer, despite having no formal medical training. His skills — and prayers — brought Glennonville through the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic with just one loss of life.
As the land was cleared, farms were established thanks to a drainage system the priest devised. However, frequent flooding and the low, swampy ground caused crops to fail. As a result, the priest became one of the earliest advocates of the Wappapello Lake flood control project. His efforts would bear fruit when the St. Francis River was tamed by the dam.
Another of his attempts at improving the quality of life for his flock came when he learned of the Rural Electrification Program. Two projects — Pemiscot-Dunklin Electric Cooperative and Ozark Border Electric Cooperative — were in the early stages in the area.
Initially he planned to join Pemiscot-Dunklin, but later changed his mind when it appeared Ozark Border offered a quicker path to bringing electricity to Glennonville.
The priest joined the committee working to sign up members for the cooperative. It wasn’t unusual for clergy to help form electric co-ops. Besides Rev. Peters, Ozark Border’s founders included Rev. F.G. Wanglin from Grandin. At Howell-Oregon Electric, one of the original incorporators was the Rev. Aloys Stumpf of St. Joseph in White Church. SEMO Electric Cooperative also had a priest as one of its original incorporators, the Rev. Hubert Eggeman from St. Lawrence Church in New Hamburg. And the Rev. A.V. Nicolas of Our Lady Help of Christians in Frankenstein helped form Three Rivers Electric Cooperative.
These priests would canvass their parishioners, encouraging them to pay the $5 membership fee and make the projects a reality. When Ozark Border’s committee met to prepare a final report on members, Rev. Peters brought the most to the table. He would be one of the cooperative’s original incorporators and a member of the board of directors when the co-op organized in May 1938. He was one of three men asked to speak when the co-op’s first pole was set at Ellsinore on May 2, 1939. He would serve as its vice president for 17 years, resigning in 1955 only after his health began to fail.
One account of his service on the board shows his influence on his fellow directors: “This board is reputed to be the only one whose meetings begin with an invocation to ask the omniscient Father in Heaven to guide them in their decisions and enlighten them in the correct supervision over their 50 employees.”
A testament to how beloved the priest was even beyond his community came when a member uprising sought to throw out the co-op’s entire board of directors — with the exception of the priest. With his help Ozark Border grew to be Missouri’s largest electric cooperative until it was passed by Cuivre River Electric, Troy, in the 1990s.
Bringing electricity to his community for the first time wasn’t the final act for the priest. No doubt recalling his first visit to the area when it was only accessible on horseback, he lobbied the Missouri State Highway Commission and Dunklin County road officials and succeeded in bringing a network of all-weather roads to the area.
On June 7, 1948, Father Fritz celebrated 50 years as a priest. His golden jubilee celebration brought civic leaders, Archbishop Joseph Ritter from St. Louis, priests from nearly every parish from St. Louis to the Arkansas line, relatives and friends to the village for a tribute that lasted four days. Among the speakers were P.G. Wingo, the first president of Ozark Border’s board and John Dalton, the co-op’s attorney and future governor of Missouri.
In 1949 he was elevated to the rank of monsignor, a title bestowed on a priest who has distinguished himself by exceptional service to the church. The kindly priest died on Sept. 27, 1956, at 83 and was buried in the parish cemetery in Glennonville. It’s fitting that his remains lie in the village he nurtured for 56 years.
It’s also fitting that in 1999, Associated Electric Cooperative chose a site near Glennonville for its St. Francis Power Plant. With the addition of a second unit added in 2001, the plant can produce 501 megawatts of electricity. It also serves as the startup plant for Associated’s nearby New Madrid Power Plant, making it a crucial link in the power supply for electric cooperative members in Missouri and parts of Iowa and Oklahoma.
Father Fritz would have been proud to see it come on line to serve another generation in the village he created.
You can read more about the Rev. Peters and Glennonville through a family history written by Ken Westhues located at www.kwesthues.com/Petersfamily.html.