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French Missouri: French Settlement and Community in the Colonial Era
In Missouri artist George Caleb Bingham’s Fur Trappers Descending the Missouri, a white French fur trader and his biracial son stare back at the viewer as they travel down the Missouri River. Although he was born after the United States government acquired the Louisiana Territory, Bingham knew that Americans were not the first people of…
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The Spirit of St. Louis: Charles Lindbergh and the Birth of the St. Louis Air Industry
Charles Augustus Lindbergh (1902-1974) is an extremely complicated person in American history. The virtues, flaws, and downright contradictions of his life and character are the subject of endless debate. What is not disputed is the influence that Lindbergh had on aviation. In an era when air travel, air mail, and even air forces were still…
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The Start of the Santa Fe Trade
Missouri neared statehood at a moment of serious financial struggle. Amid the depression that followed the Napoleonic Wars, important banks in Missouri were failing, and Missourians became suspicious of these institutions and the currency they issued. The legislature offered paper money to officials and merchants, which banks had loaned on the government’s credit, but the…
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A Portal into the Past: Prominent Newspapers of Missouri
In 1808, Meriwether Lewis, the former explorer and recently appointed governor of the Louisiana Territory, believed a newspaper could encourage public discourse throughout the region. Lewis called upon Joseph Charles, an Irish-born printer from Kentucky, to begin working in St. Louis. In 1808, Charles founded the Missouri Gazette and set up shop at First and…
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The Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase encompassed 827,000 square miles (530,000,000 acres) of land within the North American continent. Prior to the purchase of Louisiana, the footprint of the United States was confined to land east of the Mississippi River. The purchase gave the United States control of a large section of land in the middle of the…
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Springfield’s Boy Scout Band
The Springfield Boy Scout Band’s history of goodwill tours, community engagements, and honors began in 1920. Springfield’s Boy Scout organization struggled at the time. Community support for the group came initially from Springfield’s Rotary Club, whose membership made its first civic project the funding of Springfield’s Boy Scouts. The leaders of Springfield’s council of Boy…
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Route 66: America’s Mother Road
Route 66 is collectively remembered as the “Mother Road”: a path to opportunity and a symbol of freedom. Officially named in 1926, this 2,400-mile highway started in Chicago and traveled southwest through eight states before ending in Los Angeles. Route 66 connected small towns to urban centers and facilitated the prolific growth of new towns…
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Remembering the Border War in History and Sport
University of Missouri head basketball coach Norm Stewart famously despised the University of Kansas so much that he refused to spend a penny in the Sunflower State. The legendary coach was well known for his hatred of the Jayhawks, even going so far as spending the night in Kansas City and gassing up the bus…
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St. Louis Germans, 1820 – 1910
Slightly more than half of German immigrants who came to Missouri during the nineteenth century chose St. Louis as their primary destination. The majority of St. Louis Germans initially came from southern and western Germany, where economic and social upheaval had been the most intensive and devastating. These German immigrants were not destitute peasants but…
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Early German Immigration: 1820-1860
During the first half of the nineteenth century, German settlers came as groups, families, or individuals to Missouri. At the time Germany was not yet a united country but a conglomeration of duchies and principalities. As a result, these German immigrants differed in regional origin, social background, and religious persuasion and lacked a shared sense…