Editing Dutchtown, Missouri (section)

==History==

Dutchtown had a long history of habitation.  Martin Rodner, a Hessian soldier who came to America in 1776 to fight for the British during America's Revolutionary War, moved his family to the Dutchtown area in 1801, where he owned a water mill on Hubble Creek.  Because his American neighbors had trouble pronouncing his name, it became "Rodney", and his mill was known as Rodney's Mill.  He died in 1827. 
 
In the mid-1830s, the area near Rodney's Mill began being settled by Swiss and German families; they called their settlement Spencer.  That later became Dutchtown, a variation of the word "Deutsch," which means German.
 
The small village grew.  A blacksmith and a bricklayer settled there.  Bloomfield Road ran through the town, as did railroad tracks.

In 1799, the first Protestant sermon and baptism immersion west of the Mississippi River was performed in Randol Creek near modern-day Dutchtown.<ref name="Anniversaries 1949">{{cite news | title = Anniversaries in 1949 of Events Recorded in The Missourian Files | work =Southeast Missouri | location = Cape Girardeau, Missouri | date = January 29, 1949}}</ref>
 
In 1836 the German Evangelical Church was founded and remained an active congregation until about 1900.  The original church was log, but a brick edifice was built in 1887. The church remains, as does its cemetery with about 150 markers.
 
The church was also referred to as the "Swamp Church," since the village was built on the edge of a swamp.

Dutchtown was incorporated in February 1998 following a petition created by residents, and was disincorporated on 15 March 2018, following continuous flooding problems.<ref>{{cite news|last=Niederkorn|first=Marybeth|date=March 17, 2018|url=https://www.semissourian.com/story/2493384.html|title=RIP, Dutchtown: The village was disincorporated Thursday|work=[[Southeast Missourian]]|access-date=October 14, 2018}} {{Closed access}}</ref> The constant flooding (which occurred in 1973, 1993, 1995, 1998, 2002, 2011, 2013, 2016 and 2017) caused several people to already seek federal buyouts, and all of Dutchtown's assets will be handed over to the county.