The Legacy of the LaBarque Hills aka Little Ireland

By Pauline Masson –

When the St. Patrick’s Day Parade proceeds down Union and St. Louis streets on Saturday, March 16, the marchers and the green-clad spectators will be tapping into the large Irish community that helped build Pacific and preserved one of the most unspoiled rural communities in Missouri, the La Barque Hills, known locally as Little Ireland. 

Today the LaBarque Hills community is unique for its pristine creeks, vast untamed conservation areas, historic landmarks and handsome estate-style homes.

“The beautiful and pristine La Barque Hills were transformed from wilderness into a thriving farm community by the Irish immigrants who settled there,” said Joseph McNamee, teacher and local historian in his 1927 manuscript titled The LaBarque Hills. “There are probably four or five square miles of level land between the Meramec River and the high bluffs south of the winding La Barque Creek. There are numerous narrow level valleys among the various ranges of hills.This area became known as Little Ireland.”

As early as the 1820s, records of the St. Louis Archdiocese list the visits of traveling priests sent to the “Armagh Settlement,” to tend to the Irish immigrants that had settled there. To reach the Armagh Settlement, they crossed the Meramec River at a site that is identified to this day as Priest’s Ford.

Earliest families listed in McNamee’s manuscript were Lem Boyd; Severn Muir; Richard Brown; Thomas Harding; Louis Green; Johnny Null; Peter Dailey; James, Owen; Peter Caffrey; and John Brennan.

The late Laura McKeever said her grandfather, a protestant who had built a strong stone house, provided housing and food for the traveling priests.

 In 1843, the Archdiocese built a small log church and a log priest’s residence on the bank of the Meramec River adjacent to the Withington Cemetery, which was later identified as St. Patrick’s Cemetery. To locals the entire region was already known as Little Ireland.

Early on the land was a paradise to the Irish families who had not been allowed to own farm land in Ireland but were forced under British rule to earn a living as tenant farmers. In their new home, they wrote letters to families still in Ireland describing their new land as a hunters’ paradise, filled with game there for the taking.

One early transplant from the town of Clogher in County Tyrone was Peter Dailey, grandfather of James J. Dailey who, with his partner Lawrence McHugh, later built the McHugh-Dailey building. Peter bought 40 acres in the the LaBarque Hills in 1843. He would eventually own 415 acres.

In 1840 Peter Dailey welcomed others Clogher families. Joseph McName’s uncle, Long John McNamee and family arrived. They were invited to lived in the priest’s house until Peter Dailey sold McNamee 40 acres of land. John would eventually own 215 acres. 

Joseph’s father George McNamee and his wife Sarah arrived in 1849 with the romantic story that they had walked out from St. Louis to their destination, with their daughter three-year-old Catherine walking beside her mother. And their son Patrick, who had been born at sea.

Soon commodious log houses were thrown up on hilly sites near gurgling springs or creeks and level spots were cleared for planting. Citing Gotttfried Duden, a German author who lived in easten Missouri in the 1820s Long John’s great-great grandson John Sullivan noted that four or five persons could build a log house in two to three weeks, at no cost other than that of providing food. Game was so plentiful, Duden had said, that in a day of gaming, hunters could bag a wagon load of turkeys and take them down to St. Louis.

George McNamee built a substantial house and he and Sarah welcomed seven more children – Mary Ellen, George, James, Owen, William, Sarah Ann, and Joseph. 

George, who never attended school in Ireland, donated land on his property for a schoolhouse that was named for his family. One after the other his children attended McNamee School and matriculated to a normal school, were qualified as teachers. The McNamee family would provide the teachers for the School for 40 years.

The McNamees were a sterling symbol of promise of the American life. One son Peter became rich in the gold rush of the West and traveled worldwide. One photo of him in his prime, shows him visiting relatives in Ireland, and assuring them that all the stories of America being the land of opportunity were true. Another son, George, became a St. Louis Police officer, rose to the rank of Captain, and led the Mounted Patrol for 41 years.

When Patrick’s granddaughter (might be great-granddaughter) Maria Brennan bough the old furniture store and casket factory at First and Union streets to open a business, she appropriately named her restaurant Little Ireland Coffee. Andrew and Amanda Nemeth now operate the popular eatery.

George and Sarah’s youngest son Joseph stayed in the family home and taught at McNamee School for 30 years, wrote his historic manuscripts, served as organist at St. Patrick’s Rock Church and was a popular local host for frequent dances for friends and neighbors that lasted into the night.

There is little wonder that Joseph McNamee wrote his romantic tale of life in the LaBarque Hills. 

First St. Patrick’s Day Parade

One of Joseph’s handwritten and unpublished manuscrpats, found among his papers by his granddaughter Sarah Faszold, describes the first St. Patrick’s Day Parade in our area on March 17, 1871, which was held at the McNamee School House.

“The event opened with a parade,” he said. “Members of the Franklin (Pacific) Band arrived at noon. That was the signal to the member of St. Patrick’s Benevolent Society to fall into line for marching. Members carried the beautiful silk banner of St. Patrick then the members of the society two by two fell into line. Away they marched down the narrow wagon road which was lined on each side with giant oak trees. The road extended in an east-west direction from the new school house to the site of the burned schoolhouse, about one-half mile distance. Michael McNamee, an expert on the flute, and Owen McNamee on the fife, rested the band by playing the melodies, “The Wearing of the Green” and “St. Patrick’s Day,”

In 1864, Father Edward Berry arrived from Ireland to pastor St. Patrick’s, at a time when three Catholic churches in the Little Ireland community were under construction after they had outgrown their deteriorating log churches – St. Patrick’s in Catawissa, St. Columbkille in Byrnesville, and Downpatrick (St.Bridget) in Pacific. St. Patrick’s was the primary parish with the other two churches designated as mission churches.The young priest traveled the LaBarque Hills on foot and on horseback to pastor to all three churches, as well as the chapel at St. Joseph’s convent (later St. Joseph Hill Infirmary). He is credited with inspiring the LaBarque Hills Catholics, happy in their new prosperity, to provide the funds and labor to complete construction of all three stone churches.

While the children of the early settlers were growing up in clusters of homes along tree-lined dirt roads, a series of Catholic institutions found this place. 

The Sisters of St. Joseph built a convent and stone chapel there in the 1840s. When they abandoned the rural setting to return to the mother house in St. Louis, the Archdiocese gave the convent to the Brothers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. One remaining remnant of the old convent still stands – the small stone, now foliage covered, St. Michael’s chapel. In 1948 the Brothers built the beautiful St. Joseph Hill Infirmary that, though now abandoned, graces the landscape, beyond the former chapel at the end of St. Joseph Hill Road. One surviving edifice of this historic enclave is the Black Madonna Shrine, a memorial built by Brother Bronislaus Luszcz in 1938.

Today prosperous families have targeted spacious cleared areas among an ocean of trees that engulf the LaBarque Creek watershed and built commodious homes on large lots, often accented by large barns and fenced paddock’s for horses. An areal photo, captured on a Conservation Department web site, show these home sites in occasional clearings among three Missouri Conservation Department Conservation Areas: LaBarque Creek Conservation Area, Hilda Young Conservation Area, and the Don Robinson State Park.

The MCD almost tries to outdo Joseph’s McNamee’s infatuation with the pristine nature of the La Barque Hills. Beautifully photographed web sites describe the LaBarque Creek watershed as a different world, offer descriptions and directions, and urge outdoorsmen and hikers to visit the wonders of the LaBarque Creek Area, hike a well marked LaBarque Creek Trail and visit one of three Conservation areas.

A Different World

“Just an hour west of downtown St. Louis is a different world that seems far removed from the city,” one MCD web page said. “These hills forming the watershed of LaBarque Creek conserve a wide variety of aquatic and terrestrial life and supports 36 native fish species, including five native darters, making it the most diverse tributary to the Meramec River in the St. Louis area. Some of these colorful fishes indicative of good water quality include the rainbow darter, bleeding shiner and southern redbelly dace. One moderately rated three-mile hike leads to a surprise waterfall at the end.”

An Internet search of the LaBarque Hills reveals numerous sites with maps, length and difficulty of trails, hours open to the public, as well as locations of parking and restrooms.

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Today 

The Missouri Conservation Department staff are restoring the glades and woodlands of the LaBarque Hills, using a combination of prescribed fire and thinning.

St. Patrick of Armagh’s treasured stone church in Catawissa – opened in 1865 and abandoned as a parish in 1925, which was the home church of the Little Ireland families and the center of Irish culture – has been restored as a historic landmark, de facto community center and show place by the late Billy Murphy and an active St. Patrick’s Preservation Society. Mass is held here three times a year – and is opened for weddings, funerals and family events.

The Black Madonna Shrine, 100 St. Joseph Hill Road, with its eight grottos, is open to the public as a popular tourist destination. In 1938 Brother Bronislaus Luscze cleared out the trees on a slope south of St. Joseph Hill Infirmary, built a small cedarwood chapel and hung a portrait of Our Lady of Częstochowa above the altar as a reminder of his homeland. The open-air memorial is open to the public April – October 9 a.m. – 5 p.m..November – March 9 a.m. – 4 p.m..

St. Bridget’s of Kildare Church (former the Downpatrick mission church of St. Patrick’s) and St. Bridget School in Pacific is a thriving parish benefitted by an active congregation. Recently, the parish benefitted from the bequests of two Irish descendants, the Carrigan twins, Marcella Carrigan Hoeflinger and Marcia Carrigan. Each bequeathed St. Bridget $1 million.

In 2013, Larry Mueller and Carol Johnson, as a committee of Dave McHugh’s Downtown Merchant’s Association, organized the St.Patrick’s Day Parades in as a tribute to the large Irish population of the Pacific area. They continued the parades for a dozen years.. In 2014 when they named Danny McNamee grand marshal, 18 members of the McNamee family donned their green tee shirts with the slogan, ”McNamees of Little Ireland,” and marched in the parade. 

After being cancelled in 2020 due to COVID, Pacific’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade is now hosted by the Pacific Partnership. Pat DuBuque is the 2024 Grand Marshal.

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Five books have been published about the Irish families of Little Ireland: Pioneer Priests By Joseph McNamee; History of St. Patrick’s Church Armagh by Ellen Meara Dolan; The McElmeels of Clogher by Peggie McNamee Trei and John Sullivan; Preserving the Old Rock Church by Pauline Masson; and Sage of Little Ireland (biography of Joseph McNamee) by Pauline Masson