Pennytown Church
Located on County Road 205 about 1/2 mile east of State Route UU
(Photograph taken in the summer of 1999)

The historical marker by the church reads as follows:

In 1871 Joe Penny, a freedman from Kentucky, paid $160 for eight acres of land in Saline County, Missouri. This was the first of eleven purchases to be made in the next eight years by Penny and other black families in the area. By 1879 these eleven land acquisitions, each averaging six and one-half acres, constituted the 64 acres known as Pennytown, the largest of Saline county's historic black hamlets. In 1886, a white landowner permitted Pennytown residents to erect a frame house of worship on his land. In 1894 church trustees purchased the land for $20. The building burned in 1924, but a new church was completed on the same spot by 1926. In 1988 the crumbling building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was restored in 1996 and stands today as the only structural reminder of the thriving community that once existed on this land and their successful vision of self reliance.