Dresden is an

abandoned village An abandoned village is a village that has, for some reason, been deserted. In many countries, and throughout history, thousands of villages have been deserted for a variety of causes. Abandonment of villages is often related to epidemic, ...

in Brazeau Township in

Perry County Perry County may refer to: United States *Perry County, Alabama *Perry County, Arkansas *Perry County, Illinois *Perry County, Indiana *Perry County, Kentucky *Perry County, Mississippi *Perry County, Missouri *Perry County, Ohio * Perry Cou ...

Missouri Missouri (''see #Etymology and pronunciation, pronunciation'') is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it border ...

, United States. It was an early German Lutheran settlement in Missouri.

Etymology

Dresden was named after

Dresden Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...

Saxony Saxony, officially the Free State of Saxony, is a landlocked state of Germany, bordering the states of Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and Bavaria, as well as the countries of Poland and the Czech Republic. Its capital is Dresden, and ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

, the city where Pastor Martin Stephan's church was located and where his movement had originated.State Historical Society of Missouri: Perry County Place Names http://shs.umsystem.edu/manuscripts/ramsay/ramsay_perry.html

History

Dresden was a short-lived town near

Altenburg Altenburg () is a city in Thuringia, Germany, located south of Leipzig, west of Dresden and east of Erfurt. It is the capital of the Altenburger Land district and part of a polycentric old-industrial textile and metal production region betw ...

, one of the seven colonies established in 1839 in the Saxon Migration. Pastor Carl Frederick Wilhelm Walter ministered to the village of Dresden. It was one of the prominenet settlements originally but was last denoted on a map in the 1870s. Dresden remained small and never received a post office.

Log-cabin seminary

A log-cabin Lutheran seminary “college” was founded in 1839 at Dresden by J. F. Bürger, T. Brohm, O. Fuerbringer, and Walther; classes, however, soon moved to Altenburg. Most of Dresden's inhabitants came from Dresden, Germany. After Stephan's downfall, it was assigned for a time to the care of Walther, but most of the other pastors also lived there because it contained most of the habitable dwellings of the first Saxon settlers. It must have immediately adjoined Altenburg, probably on the south, because the "special partition" between them for a while was unfixed, and in 1841, when Walther left to take over his brother's church in

St. Louis St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a populatio ...

, it was made a subsidiary parish or branch of

. This probably marked its end as an independent settlement. The log cabin erected for the college in 1839 is originally said to have been located within the territory of Dresden, but subsequently has always been spoken of as Altenburg, where it is exhibited today.

Geography

Dresden was located in southeastern Perry County, a few miles southwest of Wittenburg west of the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the main stem, primary river of the largest drainage basin in the United States. It is the second-longest river in the United States, behind only the Missouri River, Missouri. From its traditional source of Lake Ita ...

. Altenburg and Grand Tower flanked Dresden to the west and southeast, respectively.

References

{{Perry County, Missouri Abandoned villages in Perry County, Missouri German-American culture in Missouri