Jefferson City incorporated in 1825, but so much of that history has changed or been forgotten. Today's Lincoln University practice field used to host early circus visitors. Although called St. Peter Cemetery #1, the old recently restored cemetery on West Main Street was the second Catholic cemetery, after the sight and smell at the northeast corner of Bolivar and McCarty Streets was too much for neighbors. The man who designed the Missouri State Seal and served as a longtime judge built a Steamboat-style home on a hill at the northwest corner of Adams and High Streets, where the Missouri River Regional Library is today. Author Michelle Brooks explores the world of the Mill Bottom and the Foot, as well as cemeteries, fairgrounds, ballparks and stately homes lost to time.
In the tradition of The Lost City of Z and Skeletons in the Zahara, Astoria is the thrilling, true-adventure tale of the 1810 Astor Expedition, an epic, now forgotten, three-year journey to forge an American empire on the Pacific Coast. Peter Stark offers a harrowing saga in which a band of explorers battled nature, starvation, and madness to establish the first American settlement in the Pacific Northwest and opened up what would become the Oregon trail, permanently altering the nation's landscape and its global standing. Six years after Lewis and Clark's began their journey to the Pacific Northwest, two of the Eastern establishment's leading figures, John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson, turned their sights to founding a colony akin to Jamestown on the West Coast and transforming the nation into a Pacific trading power. Author and correspondent for Outside magazine Peter Stark recreates this pivotal moment in American history for the first time for modern readers, drawing on original source material to tell the amazing true story of the Astor Expedition. Unfolding over the course of three years, from 1810 to 1813, Astoria is a tale of high adventure and incredible hardship in the wilderness and at sea. Of the more than one hundred-forty members of the two advance parties that reached the West Coast—one crossing the Rockies, the other rounding Cape Horn—nearly half perished by violence. Others went mad. Within one year, the expedition successfully established Fort Astoria, a trading post on the Columbia River. Though the colony would be short-lived, it opened provincial American eyes to the potential of the Western coast and its founders helped blaze the Oregon Trail.
Quite a bit has happened in Missouri's capital city since Lewis and Clark passed through the area on their famous journey. And some of that history has remained hidden. Being the center of politics in the state and possessing a small-town mindset, the city has a dual identity. Burr McCarty turned his humble home and stagecoach stop into a political gathering place. Ferryman Jefferson T. Rogers was elected mayor ten times. Calvin Gunn established the town's first newspaper and was the state's first printer. Join author Michelle Brooks as she details these and more forgotten stories from the capital city's past.
The Dark Side of Jeff City The first century of the wilderness-born Missouri capital was filled with villainous escapes from the state's only prison, resulting in theft, abuse and even murder. The grandest of escape attempts ended with the city's only triple hanging. The capital city had plenty of entrepreneurs willing to sidestep the federal Volstead Act, which attracted Ku Klux Klan activity and culminated in the election of a "law and order" sheriff, whose deputies broke laws to enforce them. Many other tragedies grieved the community, including the South Side murder of a German immigrant by a teen-aged deputy, who had been caught sleeping with the victim's daughter. Author Michelle Brooks has collected a sample of some of the shocking events of Jefferson City's first century.
Robert Kennedy, director of the National Park Service, analyzes the discovery of North America and the loss of ancient civilization, from the cities, roads, and commerce of the past as the nation evolved into present day. In Hidden Cities, Robert Kennedy sets out on the bold quest of recovering the rich heritage of the North American peoples through a reimagination of the true relations of their modern-day successors and neighbors. From the Spanish and French explorers that discovered the land that would one day make up the United States to present day in the country, very few Euro-Americans have paid attention to the evidence and meaning of the nation’s heritage. As Kennedy shows the magnificence of the mound-building cultures through the sometimes prejudiced eyes of the founding generation, he reveals the astounding history of the North American continent in a way that sheds important light on the credit Native American predecessors deserve but many refuse to give.
Undercover officer George Raffield's job was to pose as a student in the small town of Midlothian, Texas and infiltrate the high school drug ring. When Raffield's cover became suspect, word spread through a small circle of friends that the young officer would pay with his life. No one stopped it. On a rainy fall evening in 1987, Raffield was lured to an isolated field. Three bullets were fired-one unloaded into his skull. The baby-faced killer, Greg Knighten, stole eighteen dollars from Raffield's wallet, divided it among his two young accomplices, and calmly said, "it's done." With chilling detail, Carlton Stowers illuminates a dark corner of America's heartland and the children who hide there. What he found was an alienated subculture of drug abuse, the occult, and an unfathomable teenage rage that exploded at point blank range on a shocking night of lost innocence...
From ancient bayous to beloved old businesses, Metairie has changed dramatically over generations. Many of those landmarks are lost to time; the lake, railroads and a beach resort were popular features in the early days. A streetcar ran through the short-lived City of Metairie Ridge, where gambling houses and dog tracks contributed more tax dollars than did the few residents. Old Bucktown was famous for its seafood. Fat City, once notorious for its nightlife, has seen better days. Author Catherine Campanella takes a look back at the schools, shops, bars, restaurants, alligator farms, bowling alleys, drive-ins and movie theaters from a bygone era.
In the fall of 1864, during the last brutal months of the Civil War, the Confederates made one final, desperate attempt to rampage through the Shenandoah Valley, Tennessee, and Missouri. Price’s Raid was the common name for the Missouri campaign led by General Sterling Price. Involving tens of thousands of armed men, the 1864 Missouri campaign has too long remained unexamined by a book-length modern study, but now, Civil War scholar Mark A. Lause fills this long-standing gap in the literature, providing keen insights on the problems encountered during and the myths propagated about this campaign. Price marched Confederate troops 1,500 miles into Missouri, five times as far as his Union counterparts who met him in the incursion. Along the way, he picked up additional troops; the most exaggerated estimates place Price’s troop numbers at 15,000. The Federal forces initially underestimated the numbers heading for Missouri and then called in troops from Illinois and Kansas, amassing 65,000 to 75,000 troops and militia members. The Union tried to downplay its underestimation of the Confederate buildup of troops by supplanting the term campaign with the impromptu raid. This term was also used by Confederates to minimize their lack of military success. The Confederates, believing that Missourians wanted liberation from Union forces, had planned a two-phase campaign. They intended not only to disrupt the functioning government through seizure of St. Louis and the capital, Jefferson City, but also to restore the pro-secessionist government driven from the state three years before. The primary objective, however, was to change the outcome of the Federal elections that fall, encouraging votes against the Republicans who incorporated ending slavery into the Union war goals. What followed was widespread uncontrolled brutality in the form of guerrilla warfare, which drove support for the Federalists. Missouri joined Kansas in reelecting the Republicans and ensuring the end of slavery. Lause’s account of the Missouri campaign of 1864 brings new understanding of the two distinct phases of the campaign, as based upon declared strategic goals. Additionally, as the author reveals the clear connection between the military campaign and the outcome of the election, he successfully tests the efforts of new military historians to integrate political, economic, social, and cultural history into the study of warfare. In showing how both sides during Price’s Raid used self-serving fictions to provide a rationale for their politically motivated brutality and were unwilling to risk defeat, Lause reveals the underlying nature of the American Civil War as a modern war.
2020 Miriam Matthews Ethnic History Award from the Los Angeles City Historical Society Alison Rose Jefferson examines how African Americans pioneered America’s “frontier of leisure” by creating communities and business projects in conjunction with their growing population in Southern California during the nation’s Jim Crow era.
