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Behind the big themes, celebrated figures, and dry dates of history are the interesting stories of life in the past and ordinary people. Southeast Missouri has a varied and rich history that you often don’t hear about in history classes. Join Bill Eddleman of the State Historical Society of Missouri to hear about these stories with “Tales from Days Gone By.”Listen in on the second and fourth Thursday of the month during Morning Edition (7:45 a.m.) and All Things Considered (4:44 p.m.)

“A Christmas Day Ramble” in Ste. Genevieve in 1873

Unidentified people in front of “Old Brick” in about 1897-98. This building was owned and operated by George Sexhauer as Gambrinus Hall in 1873. Courtesy of the Foundation for the Restoration of Ste. Genevieve.
Unidentified people in front of “Old Brick” in about 1897-98. This building was owned and operated by George Sexhauer as Gambrinus Hall in 1873. Courtesy of the Foundation for the Restoration of Ste. Genevieve.

S. Henry Smith, founder and editor of the Fair Play newspaper in Ste. Genevieve, possibly under the influence of some writings of Mark Twain, prepared a tongue-in-cheek story about a ramble through town on Christmas, 1873.

He wrote, “Christmas came around on the 25th day of December, as usual. As we are a noted personage—for our capacity for eating—of course we were invited to all the ‘lunches’ and ‘sich.’ We first stepped in at the Union Hall Saloon, where we found ‘everybody and his grandmother,’ getting outside of ‘Hot Toms,’ Lager Beer and other ‘Christmas trix’…. In a short time, Leo arranged his ‘square tables’ in line and mount them with a fine lunch, consisting of roast turkeys, roast beef, roast pork, chickens, gobblers, pickles, sour krout, Bologna sausage, and many other articles... The crowd rushed for the tables and done ample justice to the eatables. We stor[ed] away a thigh and wing and the part that ‘wears the bustle’ of a turkey, a pound each of roast beef and pork, a large plate of sour krout, three dozen pickles, and bread, crackers, &c., in proportion, for ‘roughness.’

Next in turn we visited Joe Vorst’s lunch table….We noted….four elephants, one pickled, one fried and served with salamander sauce, and two roasted with laporte lachuree, five crockodiles, served a la charlemangue de capatoh, rattle-snakes, tad-poles, lizzards, buzzards, nutmeg-graters and sauce pan-handles served on alabaster candle-sticks. He also had mosqueto, fly and rat soup. All the other articles were served in a la ugalineoua spectorum style. We ate a plate full of each article we saw and retired.

….we next visited George Sexauer’s stand. Here we found the celebrated sable steamboat cook, Joe Johnson, with his sleeves rolled up, and regaled in a white apron, stationed before a waiter’s tale, ready to serve the gentlemen as they came in. If anybody doubted that Joe was a good cook we are satisfied that after tasting that lunch their doubts were forever dispelled…We ate about a dozen plates of soup, took several ‘extras,’ ate a few turkeys, chickens, roast pigs, &c., and felt ourself in duty bound to reserve the remainder of our appetite for our ‘Christmas dinner’ at home.

After eating a hearty dinner, we returned …. to Leo Jokerst’s. Some of the boys had taken a “le etle” too much ‘Christmas’ in the shape of ‘benzine,’ and were quietly sleeping in the corners of the room while others were saying mass over them. [‘Benzine’ was slang for cheap liquor in that time.] All were happy—and extremely so. We then….were attracted by musical sounds in the direction of Sexauer’s, so we continued our course and entered there. We found about nine hundred and ninety-nine persons, all trying to sing the loudest. We tried to talk to George, but failing to hear our own voice, for the noise of the music, we sagely concluded that George could not hear us either, and stuffing our fingers in our ears we walked out. Our memory is a little indistinct of what occurred during the evening until supper time. We ate a hearty supper…. went to bed and dreamed pleasant dreams. The next morning, we had a slight headache, probably caused from not eating enough the day previous.”

I wish all of you a healthy dose of good things this holiday season—although not so much as to overdo it!

Bill Eddleman was born in Cape Girardeau, and is an 8th-generation Cape Countian. His first Missouri ancestor came to the state in 1802. He attended SEMO for two years before transferring to the University of Missouri to study Fisheries and Wildlife Biology. He stayed at Mizzou to earn a master of science in Fisheries and Wildlife, and continued studies in Wildlife Ecology at Oklahoma State University.