SHSMO On Demand Index

In the spring of 1885, newspapers around the United States carried sensational coverage of mysterious bones, artifacts, and alleged riches discovered by an exploration party in Tim Collins’ coal mine near Moberly, Missouri. However, just as quickly as the story reached a national audience, allegations of a hoax dampened the excitement. Join State Historical Society of Missouri Assistant Director of Research, Sean Rost, for Chapter 5 of the Missouri Mysteries series as he explores the mystery of Collins’ Coal Mine. 

Peter Herschend is the co-founder of Herschend Entertainment Corporation (formerly Silver Dollar City, Inc). The Herschend family business started in Southwest Missouri with a hole in the ground called Marvel Cave. To give cave visitors more to do, Peter and his brother Jack built an old Ozarks Village named Silver Dollar City - now USA TODAY'S and Tripadvisor's number one theme park in America. Today, Herschend Enterprises is the nation's largest family-owned entertainment company. 

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. Beginning in the 1930s, scholars and locals began amassing an archive of oral literature, songs, and customs.

Dr. Larry Gragg, professor emeritus at Missouri S&T takes the viewer behind the scenes of history documentaries that he's participated in as an on-camera interviewee. Short clips of footage from documentaries will be shown in this in-person and virtual presentation. This program is in conjunction with the new exhibition Lights, Camera, ROLLA, an exhibition that explores the history of film in Rolla and its links to Hollywood.

Kathleen Seale, coordinator of the State Historical Society of Missouri research centers in Rolla and Springfield, gave a talk about the history of the Rotoscope film process developed by two Missourians: Rowe Carney, Jr. of Rolla and Tom Smith of Urbana. This presentation is part of the opening reception of Lights, Camera, ROLLA, an exhibition that explores the history of film in Rolla and its links to Hollywood.

Bill Eddleman, coordinator of the State Historical Society of Missouri's Cape Girardeau Research Center, continues the popular geneology series with insight into immigration records. Most family historians in the U. S. have ancestors who migrated from other continents. Depending on the time period of immigration and port of arrival, it can be difficult to find these ancestors and tell their immigration story. This session will summarize surviving immigration records from different time periods and where to find them.

History books tend to include Missouri’s Indigenous population only during periods when they were a threat to the state’s white settlement. These histories overlook the fact that Native people have lived here for at least twelve thousand years and continue to call Missouri home today. 

Dr. Joan Stack, curator of art collections at the State Historical Society of Missouri, gives a talk and shares artwork of Black artists in Missouri. Dr. Stack focuses on ten artists of the 20th and 21st centuries with an emphasis on artists whose artwork is in the collection of the State Historical Society of Missouri.

Download Handout

The Orphan Train Movement sent an estimated quarter million children from New York City to the Midwest and the South from 1854 to 1929, with up to 50,000 of them coming to Missouri. One of those children was a five-year-old boy named Joseph Aner, who was placed with the Markway family just outside Jefferson City. As Joseph grew up, he wondered who his mother was, and how she could have left him at an orphanage.

More than a century later, Joseph’s grandchildren had the same questions.

SHSMO executive director Gary Kremer connects the past to the present in his latest book as he ponders why history played out as it did over the course of two centuries since Missouri’s admittance to the Union.

For centuries, the violin has been both a “people’s instrument” as well as a “palace” instrument that spans the globe. Whether called “violin” or “fiddle” (they are the same, just with differing customs of learning and performance), it continues to be enjoyed across many different traditions and communities. 

Bill Eddleman, coordinator of the State Historical Society of Missouri Cape Girardeau Research Center presents the 16th installment in his basic genealogy series on the topic: “Salt, Schools, Swamps, Military Bounties, and Homesteads: Researching Non-standard Federal Lands.”

David Steward was the featured speaker in the State Historical Society of Missouri’s annual My Missouri Lecture on Oct. 28, 1 p.m. at the Center for Missouri Studies in Columbia, Mo. Steward is the founder and chairman of World Wide Technology, the largest Black-owned company in the United States. The civic and business leader will be in conversation with Gary Kremer, executive director of the State Historical Society, about how Steward’s upbringing in Clinton, Mo. and his Missouri experiences contributed to his success in building a technology company in St. Louis.

In 1972, Norma E. Short of Stover, Missouri, gained national attention for her role in a project called “Skylook.” A journalist by trade, Short rose from a columnist at the Salem Post to compiling and editing international reports of unknown objects in the sky. In this episode of Missouri Mysteries, Sean Rost, SHSMO assistant director of research, explores the curious case of Norma E. Short. This program was recorded live on Zoom on Oct. 18, 2023.

Learn about the history of the Western Conservatory of Music, originally established in Rolla in 1882. Later, the music school would move briefly to Carthage, then Kansas City, and finally to Chicago. Dr. David Samson, Missouri S&T assistant professor of music, talks about the history of the conservatory. Dr. Sampson's presentation was held before an audience at Missouri Science and Technology Curtis Laws Wilson Library in Rolla on Oct. 17, 2023, and recorded on Zoom. The presentation was cosponsored by the State Historical Society of Missouri and Missouri S&T Archives.

Learn more about the history of the Missouri University of Science and Technology radio station in Rolla, which has trained students in broadcasting since 1963. Dr. Jeff Schramm, KMNR’s faculty advisor, explores the station's 60-year history on campus. Unlike commercial radio, KMNR's format has been a free-form radio station, offering a wide variety of music and programs for its listeners. This program aired on Zoom 10-10-23 and was cosponsored by the State Historical Society of Missouri and the Missouri S&T Archives.

The State Historical Society of Missouri's robust digitization program provides more online access to newspapers, photographs, maps, letters, and other manuscripts. SHSMO Senior archivist Heather Richmond and newspaper librarian Katelyn Ziegler offers tips on getting the most out of these digital collections, whatever your research goals. The workshop covers navigation of our digital collections' website and our digital newspaper collection, including ways to access material, advanced and faceted searches, browsing, and searching by date.

Founded in May 1898 by the Missouri Press Association and established as a trustee of the state a year later, the State Historical Society of Missouri is the premiere organization that collects, preserves, and shares Missouri history. As part of the 125th anniversary, a special History on Elm program featured Missouri author, journalist, and SHSMO trustee Bob Priddy in conversation with Gary Kremer, SHSMO executive director. They spoke at a public program at the Center for Missouri Studies in Columbia on May 9, 2023, about the Society's legacy and future.

Bill Eddleman, coordinator of the State Historical Society of Missouri Cape Girardeau Research Center, presents the next installment in his genealogy series, focused on getting the most from cemetery research. Family historians often want to locate the burial sites of their ancestors, but it is not as easy as it might seem.

A.J. Medlock, coordinator of the State Historical Society of Missouri St. Louis Research Center, presents a brief history of science fiction fandom in Missouri. Learn about the evolution of this unique Missouri sub-culture, chronicling the formation of the Ozark Science Fiction Association in St. Louis to the Archon, one of the longest-running science fiction and fantasy conventions in Missouri. Featured collections include the Walt Stumper Papers, the USS Discovery Records, and the Amy Newell Verseman Papers.

State Historical Society of Missouri art curator Joan Stack presents visual examples and discusses the importance of such works as George Caleb Bingham's "Order No. 11" and the influence of artist Rose O'Neill who lived in the Missouri Ozarks for parts of her adult life and was active in the suffragist movement. Stack's live presentation on Zoom April 5, 2023, was followed by a Q&A from attendees of the virtual talk.

In this episode, Cape Girardeau Research Center Bill Eddleman focusses on using tax lists in genealogy research. Tax lists are used by few family historians but can provide far more information than most suspect. These lists traditionally have been more difficult to locate than other records, but this is changing as digitized versions appear.

John Brenner, managing editor of Missouri Historical Review hosts author and historian Kelly Schmidt for a discussion of her research on people enslaved by the early Catholic Church in Missouri and the communities they formed to help each other through their hardships, challenge the terms of their bondage, and ultimately seek their freedom. A postdoctoral research associate for the Washington University and Slavery Project, Schmidt is the author of the April 2022 Missouri Historical Review article “Slavery and the Shaping of Catholic Missouri, 1810–1850.”

Larry Gragg, author and Professor Emeritus of History at Missouri University of Science and Technology, presented a program on Nov. 2, 2022, at the State Historical Society of Missouri Center for Missouri Studies that examines the impacts of desegregation in Missouri higher education.

U.S. Senator Roy Blunt delivered the annual My Missouri Lecture on Sat. Oct. 29 at the State Historical Society of Missouri Center for Missouri Studies, 605 Elm St., Columbia. The senior senator from Missouri reflected on how his upbringing shaped his career in education and politics.