Tipped off by Found St. Louis, we checked out the Friedens United Church of Christ and its accompanying cemetery. The current sanctuary dates from 1962, I believe, but there was a much older church that dated from 1864.

I suspect that the stained glass windows might have come from the older church and were reused in the new building, but I’m not sure. The limestone name plaque over the door was preserved and installed in the ground in the cemetery nearby. For a short period after the completion of the new building, the two churches stood side by side before the demolition of the older one.

You can see where the plaque was installed above the doorway. The church, like many in St. Charles County, was in the Romanesque Revival style (note the similarity in style and form to the still extant Immanuel United Church of Christ further to the southwest on Highway 94).

While the cemetery’s land apparently dates from the 1830s, we found several internees whose deaths were from the 1820s or even the 1810s, so maybe they were reinterred here from an earlier location.

Our visit was interrupted by the sound of a multiple-car pile-up on Highway 94, from which one automobile’s horn was stuck in the “on” position. So much for “Hier ruht in Frieden” for the people buried in the cemetery.