Scarritt Renaissance gets its name and its beginnings from Methodist minister, Reverend Nathan Scarritt. To avoid the growing hostilities of border warfare during the Civil War, he moved out of his home in Westport, Missouri with his wife and children onto his farm, about a mile and a half East of the Kansas City city limits near the cliffs overlooking the Missouri River. In 1886, Scarritt's land was annexed into Kansas City and he began selling parcels to be platted.

The Reverend Nathan Scarritt was born on April 14, 1821 in Edwardsville, Illinois of Scotch and Irish heritage. He worked on the family farm untill the age of sixteen. Having barely recieved any education at all up to this point, he left the farm to attend McKendree College in Lebanon, Illinois. Young Scarritt paid for his schooling by working odd jobs around the college between regular hours and graduated in the summer of 1842.

Scarritt began his chosen work evangelizing the Indians in the fall of 1848 with Reverend Thomas Johnson in what is now the state of Kansas. He taught and preached in the Missions of the Shawnee, Delaware, Wyandotte and Kickapoo, and then was appointed to the churches in Lexington and Westport Missouri. In 1855, he went back to work in the Kansas Missions, returning to his home in Westport regularly. The following excerpt from Scarritt's autobiography was reprinted in the Kansas City STAR on April 11, 1950.

"I pursued these ministerial labors in Kansas -- and I think those labors were not without good fruits -- until the close of 1861. By that time, Kansas, and indeed the whole western border, had become so distracted by the troubles of the war, that I thought it best to desist from my itinerant work, and to seek for myself and family a little house in some quiet place -- if such place could be found -- until these troubles should be over.

"Accordingly in the spring of 1862, I purchased forty acres of land where I now reside (even after 1876 three miles east of Kansas City), built upon it a log cabin with my own hands, and on the 6th of May this rude cabin in these (then) wild woods became our home. I worked very hard in trying to open here a little farm and make it a means of support for my family.

"But in the fall of 1863, after 'Order No. 11' had been issued, the country had become so full of robbers and desperadoes, though not included in that order, yet we thought it not safe to remain so far from military protection. Hence we moved to Kansas City, where we remained until after the war closed. During those two years, I taught school in the city.

"In the fall of 1865, we returned here to the farm, and here is still our home -- though greatly improved from what it was when it consisted of a single log cabin."

Over the years, the farm grew to over 140 acres. In 1885, the City of Kansas expanded south and east, annexing about half of Scarritt's land but leaving his new twelve room mansion on Cleveland Avenue outside the city limits. Population of the area was inevitable; subdivisions had been platted in the area as early as 1871 in anticipation of the city's growth. In the fall of 1886, Scarritt submitted the plat for the Melrose Addition, a large plat that encompassed the site of his original log cabin. Other plats followed until all of the current Scarritt Point district was subdivided by late 1887.