Pennsboro was founded in the 1880s, and named after William Penn, a Dade County pioneer.[3] A post office was established at Pennsboro in 1895, and remained in operation until 1931.[4]
Pennsboro was a station on the Greenfield & Northern Railroad from the time it was constructed in the early 1890s until the line was abandoned by the St. Louis-San Francisco Railroad in the mid-1930s.[5] Just prior to the abandonment, the depot was loaded in one piece onto a flat car at Pennsboro and transported down the line to Mt. Vernon, where it was replaced that community's depot that had recently been destroyed by fire.[6]
Pennsboro was also home to one of the early rural consolidated school districts in Missouri, when four one-room common school districts agreed to combine circa 1917 to form the "Dade County Consolidated School District No. 3 of Pennsboro," or Pennsboro C-3 for short. However, the one-room rural schools themselves were not consolidated until the mid-1930s; the state board of education excoriated the Pennsboro C-3 district in its 1932 annual report for maintaining what they termed the four inefficient one-room schools rather than consolidating students at a central point and allowing teachers to teach fewer grades. (Missouri Annual Report of Public Schools, 1932, pp. 391–404) The still standing brick structure was constructed when the one-room schools were finally consolidated, and remained in use as a school until the district consolidated with the Greenfield R-IV School District in the 1950s.[7]
Today
Pennsboro today is home to the Pennsboro Christian Church and a large cemetery, as well as several residences. The community's former two-room brick school building is still standing and in use as a community center.[8]
