Events

SHSMO art curator Joan Stack takes us back to the 1850s to explore the concept of democracy presented in George Caleb Bingham's paintings, "Stump Speaking," "County Election," and "Verdict of the People." Stack considers how the pictures reflect the contentious pre-Civil War era and the potential for a shared love of democracy to unify a divided nation.

This talk is part of the First Saturday presentations hosted by Friends of Arrow Rock at the Arrow Rock State Historic Site. The public is invited to this free event. You do not need to register to attend.

The public is invited to an Open House reception Tue., Aug. 27, 4-6 p.m., to officially welcome a larger new space for the SHSMO Cape Girardeau Research Center. For 18 months, the center was housed in temporary quarters after water damage and mold closed the research center in Pacific Hall on the SEMO campus in December 2022. No damage occurred to the any material held at the research center and the collections were safely moved into storage until the center reopened at its new location.

Nestled in the foothills of the Saint François mountains, Old Mines, Mo., is a place where the boundary between history and folklore is especially thin. French colonists established the lead mining town in 1723. As the local French dialect was dying over the course of the 20th century, residents faced tough decisions about which aspects of their heritage were essential and how best to carry the culture forward.

From 1854-1929, orphanages in New York sent an estimated quarter million children westward to live with new families. Most of those children knew nothing about their own origins and how they came to be in an orphanage. In this presentation, Dr. Greg Markway gives a history of the orphan train movement and what it was like for those children coming to Missouri. Markway also tells the story of his grandfather who rode the train in 1901, and how his grandfather longed to know his own history.

Join us for the SHSMO annual meeting luncheon and My Missouri speaker featuring Peter Herschend, co-founder and co-owner of Herschend Family Entertainment Corporation. The Herschend family business started in Southwest Missouri with a hole in the ground called Marvel Cave. To give visitors more to do, Peter and brother Jack built an old Ozarks Village named Silver Dollar City. TripAdvisor and USA TODAY call it the number one theme park in America. Today, Herschend Enterprises is the nation's largest family-owned entertainment company.

Artist and Missouri native Bryan Haynes will speak about his 40+ year career journey from commercial artist in Los Angeles, to becoming a fine artist developing his style that has been termed New Regionalism. “Living in the hills that bump up against the south bank of the Missouri River, and spending time in the oak and hickory forests here, how can one not imagine the people that came before,” writes Haynes. As an artist born in Missouri, Haynes’s sketchbook fills with figures, Osage warriors, the first Europeans, and early settlers.

Cape Girardeau and Southeast Missouri played a larger role in the Civil War than most Missourians and others appreciate. Responding to the threat of occupation of Cape Girardeau by secessionists, the 20th Illinois Infantry occupied the town on July 10, 1861, and began to plan for four forts to protect against attack from the west and south. This presentation by SHSMO’s Bill Eddleman will discuss why Cape Girardeau was important to the war effort.