Bill Eddleman
Host, Tales from Days Gone ByBill 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.
Bill’s professional interests were in ornithology (the study of birds) and wildlife management. Upon earning his Ph.D., he worked for the Missouri Department of Conservation, did postdoctoral research at the University of Wyoming, and then joined the Natural Resource Sciences faculty at the University of Rhode Island in 1988. He moved back to Cape Girardeau to take a similar position in the Department of Biology at SEMO in 1995. He continued in the Biology Department and several administrative positions until retiring in 2016.
Bill has always had an interest in local history and genealogy. His familiarity with Southeast Missouri history was the primary reason he became Associate Director for the State Historical Society at its Cape Girardeau Research Center in 2017. At the center, he promotes donations to their manuscript collections, provides history-themed programs for groups in their 15-county coverage area, and assists patrons with research. His own historical research interests include mainly 19th-century Southeast Missouri history, especially the Civil War era and early settlement period.
In his spare time, he serves as president of both the Missouri Birding Society and the Missouri State Genealogical Association. He and his wife Hope also reenact Civil War era history, and are active members of the Friends of Fort D in Cape.
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One of the presidents of Southeast Missouri State has a permanent place in Missouri folklore. Willard D. Vandiver traditionally is credited with the nickname for Missouri—the Show Me State. -
Artists in the Midwest prior to 1932 had to travel long distances to participate in an art colony. These gatherings were seasonal events, usually providing artists with time at a site with natural beauty or interest at which they could receive education and feel a sense of community with other artists. -
Many people who were prominent in the early days of American settlement of Missouri are little known today. One of these early Missourians, John Smith T, was from a family of Virginia gentry who moved to Georgia prior to his birth in 1771. He left home before 1790 to settle in Tennessee during its frontier days. -
Among the many useful inventions developed at the turn of the 20th Century was the adding machine. One of the most widely-used of these was invented in Missouri and initially manufactured in Poplar Bluff—the Dalton Adding Machine. -
During the early years of the Third District Normal School (1876-1893), three educational leaders held the post of principal. The title was later changed to president. -
A grave marker in the Mount Pleasant Methodist Church Cemetery, also called Campground or Camp Grayson Cemetery, in Perry County states, “IN MEMORY OF/BENNETT MURRAY/BORN FEB. 18. 1823/Captured and wounded/by the Confederates/OCT. 11. 1861./Recaptured by the/Guerillas and killed/JULY 3, 1864/AGED 41 Y. 4 M. 15 D.” -
Zewapeta appears on maps in a location north of Commerce in Scott County, Missouri. Because Commerce is 39 and a half miles north of the mouth of the Ohio, and the locations on maps place Zewapeta at River Mile 41 or 42, the location is too far upstream for Hamtramck’s estimate. Nonetheless, it is only an estimate. -
The chronic need for trained teachers in Missouri gave rise to the normal school movement. The movement gained momentum in the 1850s, was delayed by the Civil War, and came to the forefront thereafter. The state legislature created a third normal school district in Southeast Missouri in 1873 after establishment of the first two schools in Kirksville and Warrensburg. -
The story of transportation improvements in the mid-1800s until World War I is a story of railroads. Routing of railroads made the difference between prosperity if a line went through a town or stagnation if the railroad bypassed it. By 1900 electrified lines offered a new option that lacked smoke or diesel emissions and offered rapid acceleration, fast braking, and the ability to change direction without turning a locomotive around. -
The Farm Security Administration, or FSA, proposed an experimental demonstration project to point families toward better farming methods in 1937—LaForge Farms.
