Prairie Park - Arrow Rock, Missouri
Posted by: 
BruceS
N 39° 02.449 W 092° 59.145
15S E 501233 N 4321306
Historical marker commemorating an historic house and family in the Arrow Rock area.
Waymark Code: WM1EV5
Location: Missouri, United States
Date Posted: 04/22/2007
Views: 35
"Prairie Park" was built between 1845 and 1849 by William Breathitt
Sappington and his wife Mary Mildred Breathitt Sappington. It is one of
the finest surviving examples of nineteenth century Greek Revival architecture
in rural Missouri and was a center of early social and political life in the
Boonslick area. Originally the centerpiece of a 600 acre plantation, it was home
to the Sappingtons and their descendants until 1918.
William B. Sappington's father, Dr. John B. Sappington (1776-1856) is
recognized by historians as the most successful manufacturer of patent medicine
to combat malaria in antebellum America. By the 1840's, his quinine-based
anti-fever pills had become a standard drug for the treatment of malaria
throughout the developing West. Dr. Sappington's trading empire produced a
fortune, one that he shared with his children.
William B. Sappington (1811-1888) was a highly respected businessman,
farmer, banker and community leader in Saline County. A Confederate sympathizer,
Sappington was brother-in-law of Governor Clairborne Fox Jackson, who tried to
lead Missouri out of the Union in 1861, and the Uncle of Confederate General
John Sappington Marmaduke, whose election as Governor in 1885 signaled that
hatred created by the war were at an end. ~ text of marker