Search results for ""Missouri Historical Society Press""

The first complete catalog of work by Missouri’s earliest female artist provides a singular look at territorial life in the early nineteenth century. Anna Maria von Phul (1786–1823) was the earliest-known female artist working in what was then called the Missouri Territory. Born in Philadelphia and raised largely in Kentucky, she spent her last half-decade in and around St. Louis. Though von Phul never considered herself a professional artist, her sketches and watercolors provide a singular window into the early-nineteenth-century lower Midwest. Von Phul’s art depicts not only the landscape and natural world of the St. Louis area, but also its architecture, fashions, and social life, with a notable focus on the local Creole population. Hattie Felton’s More than Ordinary is the first complete catalog of von Phul’s existing work, all of which is part of the collections of the Missouri Historical Society. The book offers a valuable source of research for anyone interested in the histories of Missouri or Kentucky. More than that, it expands the story of American vernacular art and the role of women in that story. Felton’s opening essay examines von Phul's education and artistic influences and explores her time in St. Louis and neighboring Edwardsville, Illinois, alongside letters, newspaper clippings, and other materials from her life. Following the essay, a detailed catalog highlights examples of her watercolors, silhouettes, and copywork. Looking closely at von Phul’s life and work provides a firsthand perspective on the challenges that faced female artists in the early nineteenth century while simultaneously offering a rare look at Missouri on the cusp of statehood.

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During the first two decades of the twentieth century, the St. Louis Street Department generated one of the most extensive troves of photographs ever taken of the city. Ostensibly created to document municipal challenges and improvements, the images inadvertently captured richly detailed scenes of everyday life. Largely led by Charles Clement Holt (1866–1925), St. Louis’s photography operation expanded until it produced about six thousand images per year in 1914. Many of these photographs were lost, but a city historian salvaged a collection of three hundred glass plate negatives in the 1950s, which are now in the Missouri Historical Society collections. This small, but superb, group of photographs provides a wealth of information on the visual culture of St. Louis during a period of rapid transformation. Capturing the City is the first book to examine these photographs, placing the people and landscapes depicted within the broader context of a swiftly urbanizing and industrializing metropolis. Collected and analyzed here by Joseph Heathcott and Angela Dietz, the compelling images in Capturing the City reveal the national trend among cities to use the camera as a documentary tool. Reformers Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine imagined the camera as a truth-telling instrument and used their photographs to mobilize public consciousness. Across the nation, cities used photographers to document slums, workhouses, and crime scenes, as well as municipal improvements like street lighting, pavement, and model housing. In this vein, Holt and his staff showcased both the challenges and the successes of government action in St. Louis. Consistent with their Progressive-era peers, their efforts contributed to the record of ongoing public works while shaping the narrative of urban progress itself.

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In early January 1904, a reporter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch traveled to Oklahoma City to meet with a washed-up relic of the Wild West: Edward Capehart O'Kelley. On the dusty streets of the former Indian Territory, O'Kelley struggled to stay sober and describe his childhood friend, the outlaw Jesse James, to the reporter. O'Kelley once had the opportunity to join his gang, but declined in order to set out for a career as lawman in Colorado, where his violent tactics earned him the reputation of a man with a quick temper, a ready gun, and a penchant for bending the law to suit his needs. It was there, in Creede, Colorado, that O'Kelley met-and murdered-Robert Ford. Ford was known all across the frontier as the assassin of Jesse James. When they met in Colorado, O'Kelley viewed Ford as the worst kind of vermin and was egged on by local miners to avenge his old friend Jesse James's death. Imprisoned for the murder, O'Kelley emerged ten years later a broken man, entering a modern world of telephones and streetcars-a world where people no longer cared about his Wild West exploits. It was there, on the whiskey-drenched backstreets of Oklahoma City, that the Post-Dispatch reporter found him, and where on the night before their last meeting, a drunken O'Kelley was killed in a prolonged street shootout with a brave policeman. It Ends Here by Joe Johnston draws on the reporter's accounts to tell O'Kelley's tragic story. The third in the Missouri Vigilantes series, the book unravels a circular tale of frontier vigilantism and ponders America's progress beyond it. An engaging narrative touching on bank robberies, Butch Cassidy, and elaborate tales of frontier justice, this book will delight true crime enthusiasts and students of history alike.

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The Missouri History Museum archives are bursting with collections that provide firsthand accounts of both historic and everyday moments, but when archivist M. E. Kodner came across the James Love letters, she knew she had discovered something extraordinary. My Dear Molly consists of the 166 letters that St. Louisan James Love wrote to his fiancee, Eliza Mary "Molly" Wilson, during his Civil War service. The letters discuss the war, including activities in Missouri, battles, Love's life as a soldier, and his time in a Confederate prison, in addition to detailing the love story of James and Molly. Spanning the entire Civil War period, the letters give a full account of both the ongoing conflict and the many different aspects of Love's life, making My Dear Molly a unique contribution to our literature of the time period. The book opens with a prologue describing Love's life before the war, including his immigration to the United States from Ireland, his early career, and a trip to Australia he took in the 1850s. The body of the text consists of his letters and is divided into three sections: Love's early service with the Fifth US Reserve Corps, most of which was spent in Missouri; his service with the Eighth Kansas Infantry, which includes descriptions of military life and battle, ending with him being wounded at the Battle of Chickamauga and taken prisoner; and his years in various Confederate prisons and his attempts to escape. Each portion of the book begins with an introduction to place the letters in their historical context and to briefly explain the events and people that Love mentions in his letters. It concludes with an epilogue describing his final, successful escape, his life with Molly after the war, how the letters came to the Missouri History Museum, and Kodner's discovery of her connections through family friends to James and Molly's descendants. My Dear Molly is a remarkable, riveting volume that will add much to our knowledge of the Civil War period-its battles and conflicts as well as the experiences of ordinary Americans like James and Molly.

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For St. Louis, the Mississippi has always been more than just a river. It’s been the focus of the local economy, a shaping force on millions of lives, and a mirror for the city’s triumphs, embarrassments, joys, and tragedies. Through fifty-six snapshots from the city’s history, Great River City: How the Mississippi Shaped St. Louis examines the many ways St. Louis has interacted with the mighty river running past its front door. Included among the dozens of stories are landmark moments in the history of St. Louis, from Lewis and Clark’s 1803 expeditionary stopover and the construction of the Eads Bridge in the 1860s and ’70s to more recent events, like the Great Flood of 1993. But this book also reveals some unexpected connections between the Mississippi and St. Louis, diving into subjects as diverse as sanitation, urban planning, and racial and ethnic conflicts. Some of these moments still leave their traces on the city today, while others have long since washed away. All are proof that both river and city will continue rolling on. Countless works have examined the importance of the Mississippi River in American history, but rarely through the lens of a single city. Illustrated with hundreds of maps, artifacts, and images from the rich archives of the Missouri Historical Society, Great River City does just that.

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From 1968 to 1972, St. Louis was home to the Black Artists’ Group (BAG), a seminal arts collective that nurtured African American experimentalists involved with theater, visual arts, dance, poetry, and jazz. Inspired by the reinvigorated black cultural nationalism of the 1960s, artistic collectives had sprung up around the country in a diffuse outgrowth known as the Black Arts Movement. These impulses resonated with BAG’s founders, who sought to raise black consciousness and explore the far reaches of interdisciplinary performance—all while struggling to carve out a place within the context of St. Louis history and culture.A generation of innovative artists—Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake, and Emilio Cruz, to name but a few—created a moment of intense and vibrant cultural life in an abandoned industrial building on Washington Avenue, surrounded by the evisceration that typified that decade’s “urban crisis.” The 1960s upsurge in political art blurred the lines between political involvement and artistic production, and debates over civil rights, black nationalism, and the role of the arts in political and cultural struggles all found form in BAG.This book narrates the group’s development against the backdrop of St. Louis spaces and institutions, examines the work of its major artists, and follows its musicians to Paris and on to New York, where they played a dominant role in Lower Manhattan’s 1970s “loft jazz” scene. By fusing social concern and artistic innovation, the group significantly reshaped the St. Louis and, by extension, the American arts landscape.

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John B. Bannon excelled in four distinct capacities: as a pastor of a thriving Catholic congregation in St. Louis; as a chaplain with the First Missouri Confederate Infantry at Pea Ridge, Corinth, and Vicksburg; as a diplomat winning Irish support for the cause of the Confederacy; and as Ireland's greatest preacher in the 1880s. William Barnaby Fatherty's latest book, Exile in Erin: A Confederate Chaplain's Story, looks at new historical research and covers the entire life of this great man. It examines Bannon's boyhood in Ireland and his early years as a priest in St. Louis. Bannon gave up a major parish to serve the spiritual needs of the soldiers in the field - the only chaplain in either army to do so. He turned Irish opinion to sympathy for the South, then reoriented himself in his native land after the war. His preaching was part of a devotional revolution that put new life in the Irish Church. In reading Exile in Erin, Civil War buffs will view the conflict from an unusual vantage, students of Irish history will understand the Celtic religious scene from Catholic emancipation in 1827 to the vote for home rule, and all readers will meet an inspirational personality.

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The history of women’s activism in St. Louis began long before 1920, when Missouri ratified the Nineteenth Amendment and gave women the right to vote. Women have always been a fundamental—but too often unfairly forgotten—part of what made St. Louis a great American city. By taking a closer look at decades of St. Louis women from every race, class, and creed, a richer picture of the entire city’s history begins to emerge. In Groundbreakers, Rule-Breakers, & Rebels, Katie J. Moon tells the stories of fifty female pioneers with ties to St. Louis, from European-born settlers like Marie-Thérèse Bourgeois Chouteau to early-twentieth-century cookbook author Irma Rombauer and renowned activist poet Maya Angelou. Moon also uncovers histories of lesser-known figures who proved equally important to building the foundations of this city. Whether world-famous or not, each of the trailblazing women in this book faced a host of specific obstacles and restrictions in their chosen fields that existed solely because of their gender. Their victories were all hard won and well earned. ​ Illustrated by St. Louis artist Rori! and published to coincide with the Missouri History Museum’s exhibit Beyond the Ballot: St. Louis and Suffrage, this book is the only one of its kind. Groundbreakers, Rule-Breakers, & Rebels not only expands the story of women’s suffrage beyond the fight to win the right to vote, it also reveals how generations of fearless female fighters can be found throughout American history, in any city where you might look.

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A schoolteacher, principal, amateur historian, and avid lover of the Mississippi River, Ruth Ferris (1897-1993) was a singular steward of St. Louis’s maritime heritage. Her lifelong love of the Mississippi and its riverboat culture spanned over seventy years, encompassing research, photography, excavating sunken vessels, collecting artifacts, and forming friendships with other river enthusiasts. Although too few people know her name, Ferris was deeply involved with multiple venues dedicated to telling the story of St. Louis’s inextricable link to this great river: the now-defunct Midship Museum, which was housed aboard a restored steamboat; the Pott Inland Waterways Library at the Mercantile Library at the University of Missouri–St. Louis; and the Missouri Historical Society’s River Room.​Ruth’s River Dreams tells the story of Ferris’s childhood, when she first became captivated by the Mississippi River, its riverboats, and the stories told about and aboard those boats. Along with her curatorial accomplishments, Ferris was also an accomplished artist, and Ruth’s River Dreams weaves a number of her woodcuts and drawings into its narrative of a young girl with big dreams. Appropriately, this book is geared toward early readers (from preschool to third grade), filling a crucial gap in literature about the Mississippi written for children who are not quite ready for Mark Twain. Elizabeth A. Pickard’s lively book promises to inspire a new generation of young readers, sparking in them the same love of St. Louis’s colorful waterways that guided Ruth Ferris throughout her life.

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With gracious residential boulevards, soaring cathedrals, and some of this country's first skyscrapers nestled amid bustling city blocks, St. Louis is home to buildings city blocks, St. Louis is home to buildings designed by some of America's best-known architects, including Cass Gilbert and Louis Sullivan. But no single architectural firm has shaped the style of the city known as the Gateway to the West more than Maritz & Young. Starting at the beginning of the twentieth century, Raymond E. Maritz and W. Ridgely Young built more than a hundred homes in the most affluent neighborhoods of St. Louis County, counting among their clientele a who's who of the city's most prominent citizens. The Architecture of Maritz & Young is the most complete collection of their work, featuring more than two hundred photographs, architectural drawings, and original floor plans of homes built in a variety of styles, from Spanish Eclectic to Tudor Revival. Alongside these historic images, Kevin Amsler and L. John Schott have provided descriptions of each residence detailing the original owners. Lovingly compiled from a multitude of historical sources and rare books, this is the definitive history of the domestic architecture that still defines St. Louis.

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As Democratic ward committeeman for more than twenty years (a position that controlled many patronage jobs), Bill Clay, Sr. was also a congressman putting him at the epicenter of most local political storms. Clay recounts his forty-one-year odyssey through a career filled with controversy, conflict, and confrontation.

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An exploration of women's experiences and the impact of their activities on the history and landscape of St Louis. Beginning with the colonial period and ending in the 1960s, each chapter identifies the experiences of women in a specific time period and sites of their public activities.

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When World War I erupted in 1914, the conflict seemed a world away from tranquil St. Louis. By the time of the Armistice, however, the war had affected countless Missourians in ways big and small. St. Louis and the Great War is a richly illustrated account of how the city and its citizens evolved and proudly served in those four years. St. Louis’s involvement in the events of World War I is largely unknown to the outside world, but it produced a number of significant contributions. Munitions that found their way onto the battlefields of Europe were manufactured in St. Louis. A local hospital pioneered the use of X-rays, providing a crucial new medical resource to help better treat the unprecedented casualties. And, in the nineteen months of American involvement in WWI, more than one thousand St. Louisans gave their lives. Likewise, the war had an irreversible effect on the daily routines of the city’s residents, whether in the form of propaganda campaigns that led to both patriotic fervor and anti-German hysteria, or in the purchasing of liberty bonds and the cultivation of victory gardens. Featuring more than 250 photographs and archival documents from the collections of the Missouri Historical Society and Soldiers Memorial Military Museum—most of which have never before been published—St. Louis and the Great War details how the war touched the city and how its citizens rose to the challenge.

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In 1849, St. Louis was little more than a frontier town, swelling under the pressure of rapid population growth, creaking under the strain of poor infrastructure, and often trapped within the confines of ignorance and prejudice. The cholera epidemic and Great Fire of 1849 were both a consequence of those problems and—despite the devastation they brought—a chance for the city to escape them. This book draws on the incomparable archives of the Missouri Historical Society, including newspaper accounts, letters, diaries, city and county records, and contemporary publications, to reveal the story of 1849 St. Louis as it was experienced by people who lived through that incredible year. The tale that emerges is as impressive as the city it depicts: full of all the drama and excitement of a great narrative and brimming with vivid accounts of momentous events whose causes and effects are still debated today. No St. Louis history buff will want to miss it.

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The history of Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis is told through the stories of those who are buried there. The book is organized into sections, such as artists, fur traders, and Civil War generals, which feature biographies of individuals. Besides being a history of a significant place, this book functions as a guidebook to St. Louis and its notable residents. Because so many of St. Louis’s leading citizens (such as William Clark, James Buchanan Eads, Susan Blow, and Adolphus Busch) are buried in Bellefontaine, the book is a tale of the city. Cemetery records and interviews with such insiders as the cemetery’s superintendent and gatekeeper inform the research. The contributions and controversies that make up St. Louis history are revealed, and the architecture and landscape of the cemetery are celebrated as significant to the region.

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