Sylvester Marion and Frances Anne Stephens Baker House - 1853 - Danville, MO - Dated Architectural Structures Multifarious on Waymarking.com

County of house: Montgomery County
Location of house: MO-J (Boonslick Road), Danville
Built: 1853
Architectural Style: Greek Revival

Back when I first visited this place (April 2006), it was open as a museum, and a man was trying to make money a it. He failed.
Mr. Parks gives a good view of it when he visited.
Now, it is used to store heavy construction trucking. The entire plantation is covered in heavy trucks. Sad.
The house was finished in 1853, the Baker family slaves made the bricks on site. The foundation is 6 feet deep and has a complete drainage system to take water south of the building where the corn field use to be.
The burn marks on the living room floor are left from the night Bloody Bill Anderson came to burn the house and kill Mr. Baker, but he had gone to Jefferson City where he was a State Legislator. Anderson came here after burning Danville. Anna met him at the door with baby in arms, and they rode through the house on their horses to show their disrespect.
There were 8 girls in this family, only Sally and Emma married. Emma married Ben Graham (whose family owned Grahams Cave). Slaves in Missouri were free to leave at that time, but it was safer for them to stay. After the was Mr. Baker paid his former slaves wages to stay. He also built houses for them in the area known as "Little Africa" in Danville.

"The Baker House was built on the site of the Prairie Lawn Seminary, the first female seminary in Missouri west of St. Louis, which had been destroyed by a tornado in 1849. Sylvester Marion Baker purchased the property later that year, and hired St. Louis architect and builder Sparks to design and oversee construction of the house. Much of the work was done by Baker's slaves, who molded the bricks from clay dug on the property and fired them in a kiln built to the south of the house.

"The Baker House is a Greek Revival style l-house, a style popular during the mid-1800s and used frequently in Missouri by settlers from the South, who hoped to recreated the styles popular in their native states. Baker's family came to Missouri from Virginia prior to his birth, and had established themselves as a prominent family in Montgomery County. S.M. Baker had married Frances Anne Stephens, originally from Danville, Virginia, in 1847. S.M. Baker was a well-to-do merchant, the second generation of Bakers to own a store along the Boonslick Road. The large house he began just two years after his marriage reflects the attitude of the time that a home was visible evidence of a person's social status." ~ NRHP Nomination Form