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Early Paleo-Indian cultures left behind many clues to their daily life through the tools that they used. These early people produced projectile tips that would later be called Clovis points, named for Clovis, New Mexico, where they were first identified. This spear or dart tip would have been formed by percussion flaking the general shape …
Clovis Point
12 thousand - 11.7 thousand years ago
This 200-year old dugout canoe is an example of the type used by Indigenous people and early European colonists for transportation and trade. By the 17th century, the Osage settled in central and western portions of the state along the Missouri and Osage Rivers. Upon French arrival to the area, the Osage established an extensive …
Dugout Canoe
1750-1820
In 1764, French fur trader Pierre de Laclède de Liguest and Auguste Chouteau founded St. Louis. Their family’s success in the fur trade and business helped grow the small French settlement into a well-connected city. Jean Pierre Chouteau’s armoire, crafted in the 1790s, represents the Chouteau family’s role in the founding and transformation of St. …
French Colonial Armoire
1770s
In the late 1730s, French Canadian colonists settled the river bottom on the west side of the Mississippi River. The village was one of many French communities that formed the Illinois Country. This territory was held by France until the country ceded the territory west of the Mississippi to Spain in 1763. The settlement survived …
Amoureux House
1792
President Thomas Jefferson sent diplomatic envoys, James Monroe and Robert Livingston, to France to negotiate with Napoleon Bonaparte for the purchase of the port of New Orleans (and possibly Florida) in a bid to control access to the Gulf of Mexico. They were authorized to pay up to $10 million. Napoleon needed money as a …
Louisiana Purchase Treaty
1803
William Clark used this hand-stitched elk-skin journal as a field diary in the fall of 1805. In this journal, Clark noted daily occurrences and sketched maps as the Corps of Discovery traversed the Bitterroot Mountains on their way to the Pacific Ocean. The maps detailed the natural landscape and Indigenous settlements along their route. These …
William Clark’s Elk Skin Journal
1805
This drinking cup made from an animal horn was used by General David Thomson at the October 1813 Battle of the Thames, an American victory against the British and Tecumseh’s Confederacy in the War of 1812. The American troops serving under William Henry Harrison won the battle in which Tecumseh was killed. The victory led …
General David Thomson’s Horn Drinking Cup
1813
This 1817 petition pressed the US Congress to consider Missouri Territory for statehood status. This petition, which was circulated around Washington County, was one of many signed by Missouri residents in the fall of that year. This was a part of a first round of petitions that made their way to Congress in early 1818. …
Missouri Statehood Petition
1817
Gottfried Duden was one of the first German visitors to the newly established state of Missouri. After a four-year residency in Montgomery County during the 1820s, he published a glowing Bericht or Report about the region to persuade settlers to make the state their new home. He titled the document, Bericht über eine Reise nach den …
Report on a Journey to the Western States of North America
1827
In the early nineteenth century, white Americans began illegally encroaching on autonomous Indigenous peoples’ lands in the Southern United States as state governments began stripping their rights. After winning the presidency promising to open up the West for white settlement, President Andrew Jackson encouraged Congress to pass the Indian Removal Act. The act was signed …
Trail of Tears
1830s
James Cook, Sr., and his wife Susan Angel Cook, migrated west from Kentucky and settled along Swan Creek in the lower reaches of what was then Greene County (now Taney County). As was the case with many early settlers, they came to Missouri as part of a larger group migration that included multiple families from …
Cook Cabin
1836
The George Caleb Bingham Home was built in 1837 in Arrow Rock, Missouri. Its architect and first owner, George Caleb Bingham (1811 – 1879), was a Whig politician and artist. Bingham painted portraits of prominent contemporary Missourians but achieved national fame as a genre painter for his paintings of American frontier life along the Missouri …
George Caleb Bingham Home
1837 - present
This map shows the land that had been surveyed in the state of Missouri by November 29, 1838. Most notable is the newly surveyed land in red located in the Platte Purchase region of northwest Missouri. This region, comprising the present-day counties of Andrew, Atchison, Buchanan, Holt, Nodaway, and Platte, was not within Missouri’s state boundaries …
Diagram of the State of Missouri
1838
Delaware (Lenape) women created an entirely new style of beadwork in the decade following the Removal Act of 1830 that forced them west from the woodlands of southwest Missouri to the prairies of Kansas and Oklahoma. Known as the “Prairie Style,” it combined northern and southern Woodland designs and would influence the beadwork of many …
Delaware Bandolier Bag
1840 - 1860
Once belonging to the final King of France, Louis Philippe, these pistols were gifted to Ioway Chief, Francis White Cloud, around 1845. Chief White Cloud and a small entourage of Ioways joined American artist George Catlin on a European tour. Catlin embarked on this tour to promote his exhibit of 500 paintings of Native Americans …
Dueling Pistols
1845
A child and woman’s boot from the Nathan Boone Homestead State Historic Site. Nathan and Olive Boone settled in the Ozarks in 1837 with the assistance of four of their fourteen children. They remained in Ash Grove, Missouri, until their deaths in the late 1850s. Nathan Boone was the youngest son of the famous trapper …
Boone Family Boots
1850s
On November 4, 1854, two Greene County enslavers used this handbill to advertise for the return of two freedom seekers, who had set out together from their farms 12 miles west of Springfield, Missouri. Archa, 21, and John, 28, were most likely on their way west to the newly-opened Kansas Territory. The handbill is detailed, …
Runaway Broadside
1854
Featuring a man with a devilish cloth mask–complete with black and white striped horns–this photograph depicts an infamous vigilante group that operated in the Ozarks following the Civil War: the Bald Knobbers. The group first organized in 1885 in Taney County, Missouri, gathering atop the grassy, treeless “bald knobs” of the Ozark Mountains. As a …
Bald Knobber Mask
1855 - 1889
Samuel Curtis was a graduate of West Point, a civil engineer, veteran of the Mexican-American War, and a three term U.S. congressman. He was formal in his demeanor and closely followed all military uniformregulations. The frock coat was tailor-made, probably in the fall of 1862 when Curtis assumed command of the Department of the Missouri. …
Samuel R. Curtis’ Frock Coat
1864
This metal snuff box contains a .58 caliber Minie ball removed from the shoulder of Confederate Colonel Jeremiah Vardeman Cockrell. Born in May 1832 near Warrensburg, Missouri, Jeremiah Cockrell joined the Missouri State Guard when the Civil War began and served as an officer in the 8th Division at the battles of Carthage, Wilson’s Creek, …
Jeremiah Vard Cockrell Bullet & Snuff Box
1864
This photograph from 1864 displays the corpse of William T. “Bloody Bill” Anderson, one of the most infamous guerrilla leaders of the Missouri-Kansas border conflict. Early in the war, Anderson joined the ranks of the pro-Confederate Bushwhackers to preserve slavery in the state, among other objectives. After his sister died in the collapse of a …
William T. “Bloody Bill” Anderson
1864
In a gaslight-lit pavilion at Twelfth Street between Olive and St. Charles Street in St. Louis, visitors of the Mississippi Valley Sanitary Fair enjoyed a daily raffle and other attractions such as stereopticon, fund-raising auctions, and votes for their favorite general. The raffle prizes, ranging from a Singer sewing machine to the Smizer Farm (a …
Mississippi Valley Sanitary Fair Raffle Ticket
1864
Although Missouri technically remained in the Union during the Civil War, Missouri was politically divided with men fighting for both the Union and Confederate armies as well as serving in both Missouri-based Union militia and pro-Confederate guerrilla units. The Union army maintained fragile control of the state through military occupation and efforts to control disloyal …
Loyalty Oath of James H. Barnes
1865
This wooden wine barrel assembled in Hermann, Missouri, represents the heart and humble beginnings of the state’s historic wine industry. Carved into the face of the barrel is an image of a man surrounded by fruitful grapevines. This etching symbolized the grapevine-covered land that the first German settlers purportedly found when they arrived at Hermann’s …
Wine Barrel
1875
After Reconstruction ended in 1877, white southerners sought to reassert their power and reverse African Americans’ recent political and economic gains. Increasingly, Black men faced discrimination and threats of violence at the polls. At the same time, many African Americans were forced into exploitative sharecropping contracts, and others faced unfair jail sentences if they refused …
Arrival of Exodusters Illustration
1879-1880
This footstone bearing the initials J.W.J. is from the original 1882 gravesite of Jesse James at his family’s farm outside of Kearney, Missouri. Jesse Woodson James was born in Clay County, Missouri, on September 5, 1847, the second of three children of Reverend Robert and Zerelda James. Jesse’s father died in the Gold Rush when …
Footstone of Jesse James
1882
Marceline is a small town with a big reputation and history reflecting the rise of small towns in Missouri. As the Santa Fe Railroad expanded into the west in the late 19th century, railroad leadership designated locomotive stops along the line in Missouri for water, fuel, and crew changes. This created a number of new …
Marceline, Missouri
1887 - present
Throughout the 19th century, Missouri’s population swelled with the arrival of Irish immigrants. By 1860, economic and political forces within and outside of Ireland prompted more than 43,000 Irish emigrants to relocate to Missouri. Nearly 70% of these immigrants settled in St. Louis, where many established enclaves and a shared identity tied to their Irish-Catholic …
112th Annual Celebration of Robert Emmet
1890
Composed by Scott Joplin, the “Maple Leaf Rag” changed the course of modern American music. Joplin was born and raised in Texarkana, Texas, and moved to Sedalia in the 1890s. He performed as a pianist at local Black establishments, including the Maple Leaf Club, while taking music classes at George R. Smith College. In 1899, …
Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin
1899
Published in 1899, Kate Chopin’s The Awakening tells the story of Edna Pontellier, an upper-class woman living in Louisiana in the 1890s. In the novel, Edna challenges the prevailing moral codes of the late-19th century south as she transforms from a conventional mother into an independent woman who finds purpose outside of the home. Chopin’s …
Kate Chopin’s Book and Letters
1899
Originally from North Carolina, Rabbi Samuel Mayerberg arrived in Kansas City in 1928 to lead B’nai Jehudah, the area’s oldest Jewish congregation. The 36-year-old Rabbi immediately became a vocal leader in the community. During his 32 year tenure, his social justice efforts shaped the B’nai Jehudah congregation into a proactive force for civic progress. These …
Cufflinks of Rabbi Mayerberg
1900s
Walter Majors was born to Weaver and Payton Majors in 1879. He was an inventor and entrepreneur who is credited with building and driving the first automobile in Springfield, Missouri. Majors owned a bicycle shop in Springfield off Jefferson Street near the square. He used supplies at his shop, including wagon-wheel spokes and bicycle tires, …
Walter Majors’ Machine
1901
In April 1904, St. Louis opened the Louisiana Purchase Exposition to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase. Popularly known as the St. Louis World’s Fair, the exhibition showcased the city’s grand achievements and the wonders of technology, agriculture, art, history, and culture. Throughout the fairgrounds, gardens displayed beautiful landscaping, sculptures, and waterways that …
Shi Statue, Chinese Pavilion, World’s Fair
1904
This tin of “Wonderful Hair and Scalp Preparation” represents Madame C.J. Walker’s innovation and the life-changing opportunities she offered Black women in the early 20th century. Drawing inspiration from her time in St. Louis, Madame C.J. Walker developed this hair and scalp ointment to help Black women restore their natural hair. As her small operation …
Madame C.J. Walker Hair Tin
1910, ca.
Carl Worner, a German immigrant, was a drifter and traveling artisan. At a time when unemployment was high, immigrants like Worner were able to support themselves by applying their whittling and artistic skills to carve dioramas or scenes of businesses displayed in a bottle. The scene in this “bottle whimsy” created by Worner in 1908 …
Saloon Diorama Bottle
1910
Artist Rose O’Neill’s preliminary sketch (c.1915) of a New Woman and the liberated New Man was one of several suffragette posters she drew for the National Women’s Suffrage Movement. A photograph by F. DeMaria & Co. showed O’Neill and her sister Callista wearing the completed illustration as a placard during a suffragette march in New …
Rose O’Neill
1915, ca.
Cartoons like this published in the St. Louis Republic aimed to convince readers that the German-language press in the United States did not provide education but instead served as a tool for German propagandists. Although the publisher and editor of the newspaper appreciated the contributions of Germans like Carl Schurz and Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, …
“Step On It” Political Cartoon
1918
John J. Pershing was born in Laclede, Missouri, on September 13, 1860, and graduated from the United States Academy at West Point in 1886. Pershing served with the 10th Cavalry, an African American regiment, during the Spanish-American War. In 1916, he led an expedition that pursued Francisco “Pancho” Villa in Mexico. President Woodrow Wilson appointed …
John J. Pershing Presentation Sword
1919
Walt Disney began his animation career in Kansas City. Raised in Marceline, Disney’s family moved to Kansas City then to Chicago during the 1910s. After serving in WWI, Disney returned to the city in 1919 and found work at the Kansas City Film Ad Company. During this time, he and his friends created silent clips …
Laugh-O-Gram Studio
1922
First published in 1917 by prominent agricultural scientist and educator Dr. George Washington Carver, this bulletin on growing and preparing peanuts speaks to Carver’s larger mission throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Witnessing how decades of cotton and tobacco farming had depleted soil in the rural South, Dr. Carver encouraged farmers to grow …
Bulletin No. 31 – George Washington Carver
1925
Charles Augustus Lindbergh (1902-1974) achieved international fame after completing the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean on May 20-21, 1927. A Detroit native, Lindbergh took an interest in engineering and aviation from an early age, becoming a barnstormer at age twenty-three before enlisting in the Army Air Service. After completing his service, Lindbergh …
Charles Lindbergh Logbook
1927
Freemasonry, a fraternal organization of men, has a long history in Missouri dating back to the early 19th century. The first Masonic lodge was constituted on November 14, 1807, in St. Genevieve. A year later, Meriwether Lewis, Rufus Easton, and Thomas F. Riddick, the first Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Missouri, established Saint …
1929 Masonic Uniform
1929
The Great Depression affected all aspects of daily life in the 1930s. One of the most visceral repercussions following the 1929 stock market crash was the security of a home. Rising unemployment rates and a deepening financial crisis led people to look to the federal government for much-needed relief. When assistance never came, thousands of …
“Hooverville Mansions”
1931
In May 1935, the Missouri State Legislature approved a bill commissioning Neosho-born artist and nationally acclaimed artist of the ‘American Scene’ Thomas Hart Benton to paint a mural on the walls of the Capitol Building’s House Lounge. Its passage authorized the appropriation of $16,000 to pay Benton. This was a serious commitment of resources, exceeding …
A Social History of the State of Missouri
1936
Painter and muralist Thomas Hart Benton used these paint brushes at his Kansas City home and studio. Born on April 15, 1889, in Neosho, Missouri, Benton spent much of his early life in Southwest Missouri and Washington DC. After studying at the Art Institute of Chicago and in Paris, he eventually settled in New York …
Thomas Hart Benton Home & Studio
1939 - 1975
During the Great Depression, decreased demand for cotton, the major cash crop in the Missouri Bootheel, resulted in the loss of profit for landowners and loss of work for sharecroppers. The federal government destroyed the Mississippi River levee on the Missouri bank to protect Cairo, Illinois, during a 1937 flood, placing additional economic pressure on …
Highway Officials Moving Sharecroppers Photograph
1939
St. Louis based Dorsa Clothing Company produced this silk crepe dress and jacket in the early 1940s. Located at 1007 Washington Avenue, Dorsa was at the forefront of junior dress manufacturing. After the 1920s, a demand arose for dresses that fit more youthful figures. St. Louis makers, often credited with conceiving the first junior dresses, …
Dorsa Silk Crepe Dress
1940s
President Harry S. Truman kept this sign on his desk in the Oval Office at the White House. It was a gift from Fred A. Canfield, then a United States Marshal for Missouri’s Western District and Truman’s personal friend. The phrase “The Buck Stops Here” appears on the front of the 13 inch painted glass …
Harry S. Truman’s Desk Sign
1945 -1953
In 1945, J.D. and Ethel Shelley purchased a home in St. Louis’ Fairgrounds neighborhood (now part of the Greater Ville). Like many Black families, the Shelleys left Mississippi to escape violent racism and settled in St. Louis. After years of living with relatives and renting, the Shelleys moved into the modest brick duplex at 4600 …
Shelley House
1945 - Present
Springfield Newspapers Inc. photographer Betty Love poses for a portrait with her camera. Love first began working for Springfield newspapers as an illustrator and cartoonist, and later filled in as a photographer during WWII while many of the male photographers went overseas. Love taught herself how to use a camera, and process the images using …
Betty Love Portrait
1947
The Community Builders’ Council of the Urban Land Institute, published this handbook in 1948 to serve as a comprehensive guide for suburban real estate and retail development. Influenced by the Institute’s Chairman, J.C. Nichols, the book promoted the redlining tactics he and other real estate developers employed to racially segregate the Kansas City metropolitan area …
The Community Builders’ Handbook
1948
This business card advertises the hotel owned by Alberta Northcutt Ellis, an African American entrepreneur from the Ozarks. Ellis owned several businesses in Springfield including the Crystal Lounge and The Farm–a working farm located ten miles west of the city that also served as a roadside park for Black tourists. After World War II, Ellis …
Alberta’s Hotel Business Card
1950s - 1964
In the early fall of 1953, ten cobras were found in northeast Springfield. The ensuing panic frightened residents, kept children indoors, and drew international attention to Springfield. No one knew how many snakes were loose in Springfield or just exactly how they got to the city, but most blamed a local exotic animal dealer, Reo …
Cobra
1953
This grinder cart was owned and operated by Italian immigrant Anthony “Tony” Gagliarducci. Like many before him, he relied on his trade skills to make a living in a new country. Gagliarducci started his tool sharpening business in the 1920s, pushing a 250-pound cart through the streets of Southern St. Louis for over 60 years. …
Grinder Cart of Anthony Gagliarducci
1958
Considered the “Father of Rock N’ Roll,” Chuck Berry transformed music. Berry, a lifelong Missourian, was born Charles Edward Anderson Berry in St. Louis in 1926. He taught himself to play guitar and created his own unique sound blending blues and country styles. Berry’s professional music career gained traction in the 1950s when he played …
Photograph of Chuck Berry
1958
Following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., hundreds of communities across the country witnessed protests. This photograph depicts Bruce R. Watkins leading a group of students to City Hall during the Kansas City uprising in April 1968. The image captures the emotion of Mr. Watkins and the crowd on I-70 on a mission …
Bruce R. Watkins Protest March Photograph
1968
Located in St. Louis, Harris-Stowe State University is one of the two historically Black colleges in Missouri. The university began as two normal schools: Harris Teachers College and Sumner Normal School. Founded in 1857, Harris Teachers College became the first public teachers’ college west of the Mississippi, primarily training white teachers to work in white …
Harris-Stowe University Cheer Uniform
1977-1979
Each year, thousands of Roman Catholic Vietnamese Americans gather in Carthage, Missouri, to worship in a celebration known as Marian Days. The festival’s origin dates back to 1975 when members of the Mother Co-Redemptrix clergy fled Vietnam shortly before the fall of Saigon. They were first sent to a refugee camp in Arkansas, but soon …
Marian Days
1978 - present
First published in November 1989, Coming Out: A Lesbian Newsletter was created by and for lesbians in Columbia. According to its first issue, the newsletter’s mission was to fight against the community’s alienation and “create a greater sense of connectedness” among lesbians in the area. For nearly a decade, Coming Out published local news stories, …
Coming Out: A Lesbian Newsletter
1989
This protest sign was carried by Larry Miller, a Ferguson resident and community activist. Miller was heavily involved in the demonstrations following the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson on August 9, 2014. This sign features “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” and “#JusticeforMikeBrown” in black, capital lettering. The sign’s quote, a …
Ferguson Protest Sign
2014
The Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 1970s brought national visibility to the fight for Mexican American civil rights, and Missouri was no exception. Despite making up a small population in the state, Mexican Americans and Latinxs engaged in local and national efforts to end discrimination and bring about social change. Entire families participated in …
Interview With Carlos Salazar
2017
Immigrants and refugees have historically created communities in Missouri’s large cities. In the late 20th and early 21st century, however, industries have drawn new populations to the state’s rural areas. Noel, a two-square-mile town with a population of about 2,000 people, has experienced rapid growth over the last two decades. Latinx immigrants as well as …
RAISE Community Garden
2020