Millstadt is a village in St. Clair County, Illinois, United States, located at the crossing of Illinois Routes 163 (locally, “Jefferson Avenue”) and 158 (locally, “Washington Avenue”). The village is known for its German heritage, with over half its people of German descent. The population was 4,011 at the 2010 census, but a more recent testing in July 2018 estimated the number at 3,885.

During a barn raising in 1836, it was proposed that a town be incorporated on land belonging to Henry Randleman. The name “Centerville” was proposed, as the site was equidistant from Belleville, Columbia, and Pittsburg Lake. The town was platted upon March 13, 1837. In 1880, its post was changed to Millstadt, as the state Centreville was in use by another open town.

Another account (Millstadt School website): “The report of how Millstadt developed out of ‘Centerville’ goes roughly this. The current Centreville and our Centerville each had a publicize offices through which a great deal of mail became mortified and mis-delivered. Our town’s forefathers, upon applying for formal organization through the state, supposedly decided upon the name ‘Mittlestadt’ or ‘Middlestadt,’ which means literally ‘center city’; somehow the let in misread the writing and sent put happening to the papers reading ‘Millstadt.’ As you can guess, the governing work decided to save that state as we had several mills at that era and the declare fit.”

In 1874, a German immigrant farm family was killed in a cultivation hamlet known as Saxtown, just south of the town. It made national headlines and became the subject of the stamp album The Ax Murders of Saxtown.