Our History

The story of Mount Zion Church and Cemetery reaches back to the earliest settlement of northern Boone County. In the early 1800s, settlers gathered for camp meetings at Mount Moriah, about three miles southwest of the present church. Mount Moriah was organized as a Cumberland Presbyterian congregation, but, as was common on the Missouri frontier, its meeting place was shared by people of different denominations. The Methodists worshiped there until 1843, when they established a congregation of their own.

The new church was established on land donated by Thomas and Susan Fulkerson Flynt, early settlers who had come to Missouri from North Carolina in 1835. Although the Flynts themselves were Baptists, they played an important role in establishing the Methodist congregation, donating an acre from their farm for the church. Thomas Flynt named it Mount Zion. The first permanent church building was completed in 1848, and for years it served not only Methodists but also local Baptists and families throughout the surrounding countryside.

The Civil War forever changed Mount Zion's place in history. On December 28, 1861, the countryside surrounding the church became the scene of the Battle of Mount Zion Church, fought between Union forces commanded by Brigadier General Benjamin Prentiss and pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard forces associated with Colonel Caleb Dorsey. The fighting was fierce, extending through the woods and cemetery, and the church itself was used as a hospital for the wounded. Historical accounts disagree considerably about the number of men engaged and the casualties suffered, but the battle became one of the significant early Civil War engagements in central Missouri. The cemetery still contains the graves of soldiers killed in the fighting.

War returned to Mount Zion in September 1863, when Union forces burned the church after concluding that it had become a gathering place for Confederate guerrillas or "bushwhackers." With their church gone, the congregation continued meeting outdoors beneath a brush-covered arbor, sitting on logs while a replacement could be constructed. A second church was completed in 1867 at a cost of $2,000, and by 1882 the congregation reportedly numbered 256 members. In 1903, that building was taken down and the present church was constructed, the historic structure that still stands at Mount Zion today. Its architecture and historical importance eventually contributed to Mount Zion Church and Cemetery being placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013.

During the early twentieth century, Mount Zion remained an important center of rural community life. Services were generally held one Sunday each month, and during the church's busiest years the building was sometimes filled to capacity, with worshipers standing in the back. The church also served as a meeting place for community and social events. Attendance gradually declined beginning during the Great Depression, and regular Methodist services ended in 1977. In 1981, the Methodist Conference deeded the church to the Cemetery Board. That same year, neighbors and former church members undertook a major restoration, returning the building to its historic 1903 appearance and reopening it for use by the entire community regardless of denomination.

The cemetery is itself an important record of the Mount Zion community. Its earliest marked grave dates to 1851, and the historical account records more than 750 burials, representing generations of families from eastern Rocky Fork Township and the Hallsville area. The Mount Zion Cemetery Association was formally organized in 1907 and has continued the care of these historic grounds. 

For more than 180 years, Mount Zion has been a place of worship, a battlefield, a hospital, a cemetery, a community gathering place, and a landmark for generations of Boone County families. As Hallsville newspaper editor Donald L. Diehl wrote of Mount Zion, it had witnessed "war and peace, love and hate, life and death." Today, the preservation of Mount Zion Church and Cemetery ensures that this remarkable piece of Boone County history remains for future generations.