March 15, 2019
Contact: Nancy Lee Gomer, Marketing Coordinator, 636-949-7535, or 636-795-1137, ngomer@sccmo.org
St. Charles County, Missouri – Historians, preservationists, builders and history buffs won’t want to miss the St. Charles County Parks Department’s presentation on how an 1800s home was dismantled, reassembled and preserved. “The Sappington-Dressel Home: A Heritage Preserved” will be presented at the top of each hour from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday, March 30, at The Historic Daniel Boone Home in Defiance.
Guides for this special presentation, which includes a tour of the historic home, will be longtime Boone Home volunteer interpreters Colonel Robert Pecoraro and Colonel Barney Combs. The men were members of a team that saved the home from demolition in 1987 by moving it piece by piece to the park’s Boonesfield Village. Photographs, newspaper articles and a video of this historic move will be part of the presentation.
The Sappington-Dressel home was constructed in south St. Louis County between 1804 and 1812 and belonged to Zephaniah Sappington, son of Sgt. John Sappington, a Revolutionary War hero who fought with Daniel Boone in the Battle of Blue Licks in Kentucky. It was purchased by Henry Dressel in 1887 and was in the family for the next 100 years. In the late 1980s, the home was at risk of being destroyed and was acquired by Lindenwood University, former owners of The Historic Daniel Boone Home, for preservation.
“The Sappington–Dressel Home: A Heritage Preserved” is free and open to the public; registration is not required. For more information about the program, the historic home, or other buildings in the village, call the park at 636-798-2005 or visit stccparks.org.
About the Presenters:
For more than three decades, Barney Combs and Robert Pecoraro have engaged audiences by bringing history to life at The Historic Daniel Boone Home. Combs portrays famous Missouri frontiersman Daniel Boone and Pecoraro depicts Boone biographer John Filson. At each performance, these enthusiastic volunteers are known for bridging the past to the future through first-person interpretation.