A Tale of Two Homesteads

In 1838, our ancestor Friedrich Wilhelm Twellman was 40 years old when he took his then-pregnant wife, Henrietta, and their young family and boarded a ship near Bremen, Germany, for an arduous 4-month journey to the Port of New Orleans in America. They were part of a large number of German immigrants to the U.S. at that time. Once they set foot on American soil, they still had to journey up the Mississippi River to reach their final destination: a settlement of their fellow German immigrants in what is now North St. Louis County, known as New Bielefeld (subsequently renamed Black Jack). Friedrich is one of the six men known to have founded Salem Lutheran Church in 1849.

Their son, Johann Heinrich Twillman was only 11 years old at the time of their arrival, but he would grow up on the family farm and later establish his own farm at the corner of Redman and Bellefontaine Roads, about a mile south of Black Jack. He married a native St. Louisan named Louisa Nolte in 1850 and they would have three children. John Henry (as he came to be known) would build his family a brick mansion in 1869 (see photo above from 1936). Later, he would also construct a schoolhouse out of logs just west of his farm that he called Bellefontaine School. A few years later, his neighbor donated two acres at the southwest corner of Bellefontaine and Redman on which was built a one-room brick schoolhouse. The building was called Twillman School, in honor of John Henry, because at one time he paid the teacher’s salary for a year in order to keep the school from closing. He also served on the school board. This schoolhouse was eventually replaced by a more modern building and Twillman Elementary School still stands at this same location.

John Henry Twillman died in 1882 and his family continued to inhabit the home for many years. From the 1940s to the 1980s, the house served as a restaurant, and in 1974 it was acquired by new owners who renamed it “The Old Homestead.” Today, the house is owned by the Spanish Lake Community Association, and serves as a community center.

But this is not the only Twillman homestead in the area. Indeed, just a half-mile south at the corner Bellefontaine Road and Claudine Drive stands another farmhouse that was also the site of family gatherings (see photo below). For John Henry’s eldest son, Frederick Herman Twillman, was born in 1851, and after his father’s death, he built his own house in 1883 on the farmland he inherited . He was also on the Board of Twillman School and served as a Justice of the Peace. Frederick Herman would retire from farming in 1909 and go on to help found and serve as first president of Baden Bank of St. Louis. He died at his homestead in 1922 at the age of 71.