© 2024 KRCU Public Radio
90.9 Cape Girardeau | 88.9-HD Ste. Genevieve | 88.7 Poplar Bluff
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Tales from Days Gone By

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.”

Ways To Subscribe
Latest Episodes
  • We learn a lot from letters written home during war time. Often these were summarized or printed in hometown newspapers. The 1st Wisconsin Cavalry spent much time in Cape Girardeau during the Civil War. One cavalry soldier wrote a friend, and the recipient shared the letter with the Watertown News, a Wisconsin newspaper.
  • Robert W. Leslie, who went by his middle name of Walker, was the oldest son of William H. and Mary Leslie of the Gravel Hill area in Cape Girardeau County near the Bollinger County line.
  • Before the studio system and national theater franchises came into being after World War I, movie makers distributed motion pictures in two major ways. In the roadshow system, film makers entered into agreements with individual theaters. Theaters then sold tickets to generate revenue for the film maker and the venue. By limiting movie showings, theaters could drive up demand for tickets and enhance their prestige.
  • George Rogers Clark built Fort Jefferson on the east side of the Mississippi five miles south of its confluence with the Ohio in 1779 to control access and consolidate his forces. Shortly thereafter about 1000 Chickasaw and Cherokee besieged the fort. The defenders ran low on food, so a group of men stole out at night, crossed the river, and went 12 miles to Matthews Prairie in present day New Madrid County, Missouri. The goal was hunting buffalo.
  • Few traces remain today of what was the largest town in Carter County in 1920. Midco lay two miles north of Fremont and housed the Mid-Continent Iron Company smelter and chemical plant.
  • The demand for higher education in Missouri increased after the Civil War. Children of families from an expanding middle class aspired to prepare for better careers, but many could not afford the costs of university education.
  • Residents of Charleston, Missouri observed the holiday season on January 2, 1860 with a grand Christmas ball at the Charleston Hotel, hosted by Mr. Bob Holeman. This event followed another grand soiree held at the County Courthouse on Christmas Eve.
  • An often-overlooked journal by a British immigrant provides details of the eastern Ozarks of Missouri in 1834. George W. Featherstonhaugh’s training and connections in government earned him an appointment as U. S. Geologist, assigned to reconnoiter the region between the Missouri and Red Rivers.
  • At the outbreak of the Civil War, the choice of which side to join in the conflict was obvious for many young Missouri men. One stuck with family, or tradition, or with their convictions. For one young Cape Girardeau County teenager, though, the choice was not obvious. Eighteen-year-old William R. Whittaker was a resident of the Pocahontas area in Cape Girardeau County when he decided to join in the fray in 1863.
  • Logging in the Bootheel began in earnest in the late 1800s. Several timber companies operated in the area, exemplified by the Wisconsin Lumber Company. The company operated on 60,000 acres initially purchased and leased starting in 1898 for logging by William Deering, founder of the Deering Harvester Company.