Editing Brentwood, Missouri (section)

==History==
The area that is Brentwood consists of three land purchases: that of Louis J. Bompart who acquired his lot first in 1804, that of the Gay family, and that of the Marshall family. In the 1870s, a man by the name of Thomas Madden arrived and soon became the businessman of the community. He operated a rock quarry, and constructed a tavern, a barbershop, a grocery store, and a blacksmith shop. Due to Madden's prominence in the community, the town was then named Maddenville.

With a location on the Manchester Trail, a route that was mostly frequented by mail coaches and [[Covered wagon|prairie schooner]]s going west, Maddenville in the 1800s became a prosperous town on the outskirts of [[St. Louis]], to which it was connected by a streetcar line.

In 1919, it was discovered by the residents of Maddenville that the inhabitants of the neighboring [[Maplewood, Missouri|Maplewood]] were planning to elect whether or not to [[annexation|annex]] their town. To avoid annexation and to establish their own school district, the residents decided to incorporate Maddenville into a village. On December 15, 1919, the town of Maddenville officially became the village of Brentwood.

During the late 1920s, the village earned an unhealthy reputation for its numerous gambling houses and illegal activities that took place around the intersection of Manchester Road and Brentwood Boulevard. The first mayor, James L. Willingham (in office from 1929 to 1931), ran on the promise to clean Brentwood up and eliminate the casinos, along with the hoodlums who hung around them, which he did. The town then became once again attractive for families. On April 12, 1929, Willingham signed ordinance 1A, which established Brentwood as a city and determined its boundaries.<ref>{{cite book|last=Brentwood Historical Society|title=Images of America: Brentwood Missouri|year=2002|publisher=Arcadia Publishing|location=Charleston, SC|isbn=978-0-7385-2021-6|pages=8–9}}</ref>