Seelitz 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

Seelitz was named after Seelitz in

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 ...

.State Historical Society of Missouri: Perry County Place Names http://shs.umsystem.edu/manuscripts/ramsay/ramsay_perry.html

History

Seelitz 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 Ernst Moritz Bürger was the

Lutheran Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism that emerged under the work of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German friar and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched ...

pastor of the village. Seelitz was settled by people from Bürger's congregation in Germany and from that of his father. Although only one of the colonists is recorded as coming from the small parish of Seelitz, which is near

Rochlitz Rochlitz (; , ) is a major district town (Große Kreisstadt) in the district of Mittelsachsen, in Saxony, Germany. Rochlitz is the head of the "municipal partnership Rochlitz" (Verwaltungsgemeinschaft Rochlitz) with its other members being the mu ...

in the

Zwickauer Mulde The Zwickauer Mulde () is a river in Saxony, Germany. It is the left tributary of the Mulde and in length. The source of the river is in the Ore Mountains, near Schöneck, in the Vogtlandkreis. It runs northeast to Aue, then northwest to ...

valley, Bürger may have chosen it out of filial piety and the memory of his own first pastorate, rather than

Lunzenau Lunzenau () is a town in the district of Mittelsachsen, in Saxony, Germany. It is situated on the river Zwickauer Mulde, 16 km west of Mittweida, and 18 km northwest of Chemnitz Chemnitz (; from 1953 to 1990: Karl-Marx-Stadt (); ; ...

, from which he and most of his people had actually come. Seeltiz remained small and never received a post office.

Location

Seelitz must have been near to, and somewhere to the north of, Frohna, in the Brazeau Creek bottom, because the "special partition" between those two colonies had not yet been agreed upon in November, 1839. Seelitz' low-lying situation made it unhealthy and subject to various fevers. By 1841, Bürger's congregation had been reduced to five, and after much dissatisfaction he resigned, and the parish was made a branch of Altenburg. Thereafter the name disappears from the map. It has been impossible to ascertain whether its territory was united with that of Altenburg, or Frohna, or perchance changed its name to Brazeau, a small community which still survives a short distance away on Brazeau Creek, and which is said to have been originally settled by the Saxons in 1839. Another possible location is provided by an 1870s map of neighboring Illinois counties, it locates Seelitz northeast of Altenburg and northwest of Wittenberg along the southern bank of the Brazeau Creek.

References

{{coord missing, Missouri Abandoned villages in Perry County, Missouri