My Corner Online
Rutledge Flea Market and Rutledge Missouri
On Saturday, May 20, 2023, we drove Sever Lake in the Southeast corner of Knox County to the Rutledge Flea Market on State Highway V in the Northeast corner of Knox County.
Be sure to visit their website page to see the drone shot of this place as it is huge at 80 acres! Rutledge Flea Market is Missouri's oldest and largest consecutive flea market having operated since 1948, originally as a dog and gun exchange. As we drove along the road filming the length of this place in the above video, I could imagine the crowds shopping for antiques, collectables, crafts, and homemade goods. What is more amazing to me is that this is in a remote area and people come from far away just to see this flea market. I just wanted to see it since it was along our way driving to counties in northeast Missouri and it contains my maiden name.
Our next stop was not too far away, but just over the border into the southeast corner of Scotland County being the town of Rutledge, Missouri. I just had to get out and stand by the sign with my name. I consider myself proud to be a Rutledge. Of course the flea market is named of the town, but so was the meat processing, garage, and car wash. There may have been other uncreative named business named so because of the town. I wondered if anyone named Rutledge actually lived in the town anymore and why the town was named such. There was a friendly family sitting outside on a front porch when we stopped to photograph the sign with a lovely flower bed at the road. They chatted with me and could not recall why the town was named as such, but said there was a history book about the town and they it used to be a really bustling large town because of the railroad. As we stood there chatting about that, here came along a train which we watched go by. The internet indicates it was named not after someone who lived there, but a "Mr. Rutledge" who was a land agent, or official, of the land company. As I read it, the land company was putting in the railroad and this company was backed by an English company, so the names of the towns of Baring and Rutledge had to be of English origin. I sure would like to know the first name of this Mr. Rutledge and his history.
From Wikipedia: A post office called Rutledge has been in operation since 1888. The community has the name of one Mr. Rutledge, a land agent.
From the archives: A post office from 1889; in the southern part of the county in Sand Hill Township, fourteen miles southeast of Memphis. It is a station on the Santa Fe line, so established about the time the line was completed to this point. When Millport (q.v.) in Knox was missed by the railroad it was moved over to this new site. Rutledge is surrounded by good farming land. The land was purchased from a Wm. Lingenfelter, the latter retaining one-half interest. He wanted to name the station Lottie for one of his daughters, but was overruled by the land company. The company was getting its money from an English company, and it was a requirement that two towns on the Santa Fe at this point be named for two officials of that company; hence the name Rutledge. (See Baring, Knox County) (ATLAS SCOTLAND 1898; HIST. N.E. MISSOURI, 612; QUINCY HERALD-WHIG, Dec. 29, 1935; Maps Missouri from 1898; R.D. Westcott) Source: Elliott, Katherine. "Place Names of Six Northeast Counties of Missouri." M.A. thesis., University of Missouri-Columbia, 1938.
On the way there, as you can see in the above video, we had the most fabulous experience of almost running over a bald eagle! I do not know many people who can say they almost ran over a bald eagle.