St. Louis Communities 2
The City of St. Louis consists of almost eighty neighborhoods that carry specific names based on their locations in the city. Many were first settled by particular ethnic groups, such as the Irish and the Germans, and as the city grew and changed, others have developed more recently. St. Louis County has sprawled in three directions around the city into more than one hundred villages and small cities.
Neighborhood History Resource (City of St. Louis Community Development Agency)
- St. Louis City Neighborhood Histories – Includes maps and detailed histories for twenty-seven city neighborhoods.
Learning about where your ancestors lived may help you determine where they worshiped, worked, went to school, and spent their free time. Many communities in St. Louis County have historical societies that have published books on their cities, and many local authors have written about specific ethnic and religious groups in both the city and county.
StLGS has worked with some neighborhood groups to digitize and preserve records. We welcome other organizations to partner with us.
Click on each title below to expand the details and see the data.
Fenton
Fenton, Missouri, located in southwest St. Louis County, was populated by Native Americans long before white settlers arrived in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Although not incorporated as a town until 1874, the growing village established a ferry crossing the Meramec River and a post office in 1833. About twenty years later, a local group constructed a toll bridge across the river.
The town increased in size as access improved, and by 1955 it was large enough to reincorporate as a fourth-class city with a mayor and other officials. At that time, the city expanded in size, annexing an additional 1,500 acres. Today, the city covers about five and a half square miles and supports more than 600 businesses.
Fenton Historical Society
The Fenton Historical Society was founded in 1993 to preserve the history of the community. The society established, refurbished, and continues to manage the Fenton History Museum, located in a home built in 1905.
Indexes to Some Historic Records from Fenton
In 2021, members of the Olde Towne Fenton Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution began a project to index some of these collections. The indexes include prominent Fenton residents and families and were created by Donna Barnes, Lisa Barnes, Eleanor Gibson, Kathleen Givens (project leader), Mary Kinnaw, Diana Miller, Joyce Rea, and Nora Zimmer.
Both groups have agreed to share the indexes with StLGS, and we thank them for their generosity.
Fenton Record Indexes Available Online
Rock Hill
Rock Hill is one of many communities in mid-St. Louis County. It was populated very early, and by the mid-1850s many prominent St. Louisans owned land there.
Webster Groves
The area that is today Webster Groves in St. Louis County was populated by the mid-nineteenth century. The Pacific Railroad’s inclusion of stops in Webster brought further growth. By 1866, the community contained four churches, followed by a public school system two years later. Webster was incorporated as a city in 1896 and has continued to thrive.
Webster Groves Historical Society
The Webster Groves Historical Society (WGHS) incorporated in 1965, originally to save the historic Hawken House, which was under threat of demolition. Over the years, the society has collected historic records donated by individuals and those discarded by government agencies.
In 2020, WGHS entered into an agreement with StLGS to share some of its records. As the records are scanned and indexed, they are being added to the StLGS website.
Webster Groves Historic Records
Last modified: 04-Jan-2026 16:36