Our History

Preface to the History of

Bellerive Acres

The idea for compiling this history was conceived during the garden club's 1979-80 calendar year. The theme for our programs that year was "Missouri". At each meeting we studied a different aspect of our State, taking in turn its trees, its flowers, its birds, its gardens and beauty spots. When we got to beauty spots, of course, we studied our own Bellerive Acres. For this program, we had as our guest speaker Mrs. Lucy Huger, who is the daughter of the original homeowner here, and her talk proved to be a gold mine of information about how it was in the early days of our Village.

We took notes and taped her talk. Later, the garden club decided to enlarge upon our gleanings by forming a committee to gather as much information from all sources as possible and thus compile a history to be presented at Community Night in June '81. Some of the history was obtained from the booklet, "Normandy", published in 1973. Much of the wordofmouth material was gathered by Agnes Pearcy who has maintained contact with several early residents. Agnes' own recollections were invaluable to this history. (Lisa Brockmeyer has immortalized Agnes in a delightful poem to be found on page 6.)

The committee did try a scientific approach to this history, when, armed with pens and notebooks, we traipsed over to Clayton one afternoon to get the complete rundown on each house in Bellerive Acres. Weren't we ambitious! A nice gentleman explained at length how to obtain the information and it seems if you don't know the exact date a transaction took place, you are looking for a needle in a haystack. Feeling rather foolish, we decided to go home and use the unscientific approach of calling the present resident of each home for the information.

This is by no means a complete study. We would appreciate it if the residents of Bellerive Acres would share with us any interesting facts or tidbits which they might know about, then perhaps we could write an updated version sometime in the future.

I would like to close this preface with a tribute to the residents of Bellerive Acres who have truly put down their roots in this soil, some having been here twenty or thirty years or more. One such resident was Mike O'Neill whose son, Kevin, asked her how long she had been living in Bellerive Acres. Mike answered, "Oh, about twentyfive years". Kevin thought about this for a moment then replied: "Well, how do you like it so far?". So we say to all you wonderful longtimers, we hope you like it "so far", and will like it even better in the future.

We hope you enjoy this history as much as we enjoyed putting it together.

The Historical Committee,

Pat Brockmeyer

Elaine Goodwin

Beverly Molden

Agnes Pearcy