Center for Missouri Studies
605 Elm Street
Columbia, MO
Author of The Names of John Gergen: Immigrant Identities in early 20th Century St. Louis
Author Benjamin Moore, winner of the 2022 Missouri History Book Award from the State Historical Society of Missouri, will discuss his book, The Names of John Gergen: Immigrant Identities in early 20th Century St. Louis.
In 2004, Benjamin Moore found 124 pages of tattered schoolwork from 1917 & 1918 by a nine-year-old boy named John Gergen in a south St. Louis dumpster. The boy, it turned out, was an immigrant and an orphan, who was known over the course of his short life by at least seven names and whose life would be marked by failure and an early death. Intrigued, Moore embarked on a fifteen-year quest to find out: Who was John Gergen? And what did it mean to be an immigrant whose names and identities shifted according to time, place, and circumstance?
This program is co-sponsored by SHSMO and University of Missouri Press.
History on Elm series celebrates the 125th anniversary of the founding of the State Historical Society in 1898 by exploring a variety of topics the second Tuesday of each month at noon at the Center for Missouri Studies in Columbia. The public is invited to attend. Registration is not required.