MoHistory

The story of how Missouri became a state takes us back to the early 1800s. However, the history of the people who lived in this area stretches back much, much further. In order to tell a complete and honest story about Missouri’s beginnings, we need to acknowledge and commemorate the histories of Missouri’s first inhabitants, as well as the people living today whose ancestral lands became part of our state. …

Continue reading "Making Missouri: More than 200"

When young Miles Dewey Davis III was just one year old in 1927, a devastating tornado descended on St. Louis and his hometown of East St. Louis. “I seem to remember . . .” he wrote in his autobiography, “something in the bottom of my memory. Maybe that’s why I have such a bad temper …

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Unusual objects are lurking in the Missouri Historical Society Collections! Some seem spooky to modern viewers, like death masks. Others sound gross, like art and jewelry made of human hair. And some present us with mysteries, like this coffin handle that spent more than half a century buried underground in Virginia before somehow making its …

Continue reading "The Mystery of the Traveling Coffin Handle"

Written by TMH Apprentices Max Blatter, Marley Gardner, and Gavin O’Neal A few nights before Halloween in 1890, a crowd primed for a display of the supernatural in the lavish Pickwick Theatre instead erupted in a riot. A seance had gone horribly wrong, two mediums were on the run, and a rope was around the …

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Murder ballads are an integral part of American folklore and music history. For years, songs inspired by true crime have captivated the public. Some have been inspired by crimes that were mere footnotes at the time they were perpetrated, while others loomed large in the public eye. However, the truth rarely gets in the way …

Continue reading "The Truth behind the Murder Ballad: Duncan and Brady"

This year marks the 30th anniversary of MHS Press. The year 1991 was a big one for the Missouri Historical Society: We opened the Library & Research Center in the former United Hebrew Temple on Skinker Boulevard, and the Press was officially born with the publication of Charles van Ravenswaay’s Saint Louis: An Informal History …

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First published October 15, 2020. The name and story of Virginia Minor is one that every American should know. Unfortunately, her contributions are often overlooked or downplayed in the national history of the suffrage movement. But for a few years in the early 1870s, Virginia’s bold actions made St. Louis the site of one of …

Continue reading "The “Radical” Ideas of Virginia Minor"

“It is the failure to apprehend this great truth that induces so many unsuccessful attempts at final compromise between the slave and free States, and it is the existence of this great fact that renders all such pretended compromises, when made, vain and ephemeral.” —William Seward, 1858 The existence of the “peculiar institution” in Missouri shaped the discussion about slavery’s expansion in 19th century America. As slave-produced …

Continue reading "Making Missouri: Compromising Missouri"

The Missouri Historical Society recently received a donation of letters written to Charles DeHault Delassus that date from the 1790s and early 1800s. These letters pertain to the tumultuous time when Spain governed the Louisiana Territory, and the eventual Louisiana Purchase. The letters are now part of the Alonzo J. Tullock Louisiana History Collection in …

Continue reading "Who Was Alonzo J. Tullock?"

When we think of gargoyles, our minds often go to places like the iconic Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris. But if you look closely, these stone statues are lurking all over St. Louis. Everywhere from cathedrals to colleges to cemeteries, our city is full of gargoyles. The term gargoyle comes from an old French word, gargouille, which means throat or pipe. …

Continue reading "Gargoyles in the Gateway City"

If you’ve been to a beer garden around St. Louis today, it’s hard to imagine the scene of shady tables and chatting friends provoking a violent outburst. While they aren’t so hotly debated today, a battle over beer gardens was raging in the mid-1800s. As thousands of German immigrants came to St. Louis, they brought their old world cultures …

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People have always been people—that’s one of my favorite facts about history. It’s also a very easy fact to forget. We talk about “great men” of history and the things they did and the decisions they made that still impact us today. We often don’t think about the rest of their lives—their families, their friends, or the smaller decisions they made. …

Continue reading "Making Missouri: Examining Missouri’s First Statesmen"