In 1815, early settler and Revolutionary War veteran Stephen Hempstead asked the Connecticut Home Missionary Society to send a missionary to organize Presbyterian churches in the area. The Reverend Mr. Salmon Giddings left Connecticut alone on horseback on December 26, 1815, and came to Missouri, but because settlers were harvesting their crops when he arrived, he first went south and established the first Presbyterian Church west of the Mississippi at Caledonia, Missouri. After harvest, he returned and organized Bonhomme Presbyterian Church at the home of Captain Joseph Conway on October 4, 1816, and the first service was held on October 6, 1816, at the home of Elizabeth Smith. Charter members included Stephen Hempstead and the wife of Joseph Conway Sr., a captain in the War of 1812 and an associate of Daniel Boone. For 25 years, services were held in a log cabin that later burned and then in members' homes. In 1841, Joseph Conway Jr. donated land for the Old Stone Church, which was built of limestone from a nearby farm with lime and sand mortar by a professional stone mason, a carpenter, and some church members. Inside were white wooden benches seating about 60 people on the first floor and another 40 in a slave balcony, and a parlor-size pump organ bought for $35 in 1896 stood at the front. Kerosene lamps lit the sanctuary, and below it was space for a school and schoolmaster's quarters. The church remained active until the Civil War, when the military closed it. After the war, the Bonhomme Presbyterian Church declined as many members left the area and few Presbyterians moved in, falling to three members in 1955. When Miss Annie Yokel died in 1956, she left a bequest that helped purchase the property for the current church about a half mile west of the old building. In 1959, with only six members, the congregation built a chapel, educational building, and manse, and the main sanctuary now in use was dedicated on October 6, 1967. After the new building was completed, the Old Stone Church stood unused and deteriorated until vandalism prompted Bonhomme's Session to create a committee to care for the church and its cemetery, where more than 150 people are buried, including Nancy Sappington Baxter, whose identified grave from 1844 is the oldest.