Nelson-Pettis Farmsteads Historic District

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995.

From the record

“Nelson-Pettis Farmsteads Historic District, also known as Poverty Hill, is a national historic district located at St. The district encompasses four contributing buildings, three contributing sites, and one contributing structure on two adjoining farmsteads - the Nelson farmstead and the Pettis farmstead.”
Wikipedia article Nelson-Pettis Farmsteads Historic District, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 63 National Register listings published here for Buchanan County · listed in 1995 · category: District.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

Listed as. Nelson--Pettis Farmsteads Historic District - the National Register files a house under its owner's surname.
Address. 4401 Ajax Rd., 3412 Pettis Rd., St. Joseph, 64503
When was it listed? May 1995
Category. district
Township. Washington township
National Register reference number. 95000587 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

The ground it stands on

190 words

The chapter on Washington Township in History of Buchanan County and the City of St. Joseph and Representative Citizens : 1826 to 1904, published 1904 names St. Joseph. This is what it says, exactly as the scans read.

Some of the early farms in Washington township now form a part of the city of St. Joseph. The following persons are mentioned in history as having settled prior to 1840: John H. Whitehead, William Whitehead, Henr}- \\\ Hanson, James Cochran, Frederick Waymire, William Pugh, Clayborne F. Palmer, A. C. Hyde, Thomas, John and Elisha Sollars. Stephen Parker, Isaac and Michael ^liller, James G. Karnes, Alexander Fudge, Leroy Kauffman, Benjamin Williams, Jacoli (iroschon. Logan Jones, Edward Maxwell, _F)hn H. Cox, Da\id Ewing, William Sallee, Joseph Davis, George Coughern, Michael Rogers, F.

Passage source: History of Buchanan County and the City of St. Joseph and Representative Citizens : 1826 to 1904, published 1904.

Washington township has three justices of the peace and one constable, who are stationed at St. Joseph. There are four post offices in the township, besides St. Joseph - Stock Yards (South St. Joseph), Vories (South Park), Inza (Hyde's Addition) and Saxton.

Passage source: History of Buchanan County and the City of St. Joseph and Representative Citizens : 1826 to 1904, published 1904.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Washington Township - 190 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.

Fires near this property

15 since 1995

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 15 fires within 5 miles of Nelson-Pettis Farmsteads Historic District between 1995 and 2020, burning about 882 acres in total. None started naturally. 3 were recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	9
Arson/incendiarism	3
Debris and open burning	2
Equipment and vehicle use	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
14 September 2017	Equipment and vehicle use	1.0 acres	Doniphan County	017-108
11 September 2018	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.8 acres	Missouri Department of Conservation	177936-01110-09112018-1615
10 April 2018	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	2.5 acres	Missouri Department of Conservation	177644-01110-04102018-1806
8 March 2018	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	21 acres	Missouri Department of Conservation	176120-01180-03082018-1243
26 March 1995	Arson/incendiarism	1.0 acres	Missouri Department of Conservation	not named
15 March 2018	Arson/incendiarism	3.2 acres	Missouri Department of Conservation	176117-01180-03152018-1613
15 March 2015	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	400 acres	Kansas Forest Service	28
14 March 2015	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	400 acres	Kansas Forest Service	27

Every fire recorded in Buchanan County

Mines and quarries near this property

10 of 15 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 15 workings within 5 miles of Nelson-Pettis Farmsteads Historic District: 14 past producers, 1 producer. 1 still produces. What was taken out: Stone, Crushed/Broken, Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status
St Joseph Dredge	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Unknown	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Unknown	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Unknown	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Unknown	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
City Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
Farmer & Dunn Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
Roth Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
South St Joe Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
Unknown	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer

Every working recorded in Buchanan County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

6 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Hall School	2.1 miles	2017
St. Joseph Park and Parkway System	2.3 miles	1995
Neely Elementary School	2.5 miles	2014
Jesse James House	2.8 miles	1980
John Patee House	2.8 miles	1966
Thompson-Brown-Sandusky House	2.9 miles	1983

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 95000587 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Buchanan County	All 63 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.