Tales from Days Gone By
New episode released the second and fourth Thursday of the month.
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.”
Latest Episodes
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One of the factors that plagued east-west transportation in the Missouri Bootheel was blockage by swamps running mostly north-south. -
Missouri’s counties are named for national or religious heroes, Presidents, geographic features, and politicians, among others.
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Even though Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone in 1876, the invention caught on slowly. -
A Civil War map in the National Archives in College Park, Maryland reads, “S. E. Missouri, Country Around Ironton” on its reverse. It is a sketch map of the Arcadia Valley from Pilot Knob to Arcadia, including Ironton. The map was prepared in 1861, according to its title in the National Archives, “1861 Confederate Map of Ironton, Missouri and Vicinity.” -
Otto Widmann is unknown to the average Missourian but is an icon to those who study Missouri birds.
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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. -
At 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, February 19, 1901, J. H. Tettaton proceeded from the Dunklin County jail, escorted by Deputies John H. Bledsoe and Hiram A. Gardner, and preceded by Sheriff Will Satterfield, to a gallows in Kennett.
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![L'Isle, Guillaume De, and France. Dépôt Des Cartes Et Plans De La Marine. Carte de la rivière de Mississipi: sur les mémoires de Mr. Le Sueur qui en a pris avec la boussole tous les tours et detours depuis la mer jusqu'à la rivière St. Pierre, et a pris la hauteur du pole en plusieurs endroits. 1718. Map. [Translation: Deposit of maps and plans of the Navy. Map of the Mississippi River: on the memoirs of Mr. Le Sueur, who took with the compass all the turns and detours from the sea to the St. Pierre River, and took the height of the pole in several places.]](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/0f044f9/2147483647/strip/true/crop/400x400+131+0/resize/280x280!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F08%2F10%2F68402c2349a1ad4d8193f374c74d%2Fcapes.png)
The name “Cape Girardeau” puzzles many non-residents of Southeast Missouri, who wonder why a coastal feature is at such an inland location. -
American settlers in Missouri 200 years ago would have been familiar with a ghostly “booming” sound heard in later winter and early spring on prairies. The source of this sound was displaying male greater prairie chickens. -
Misfortune followed the Annie P. Silver. Built in summer 1878 from the dismantled Susie Silver, she operated in the St. Louis-New Orleans trade.
![L'Isle, Guillaume De, and France. Dépôt Des Cartes Et Plans De La Marine. Carte de la rivière de Mississipi: sur les mémoires de Mr. Le Sueur qui en a pris avec la boussole tous les tours et detours depuis la mer jusqu'à la rivière St. Pierre, et a pris la hauteur du pole en plusieurs endroits. 1718. Map. [Translation: Deposit of maps and plans of the Navy. Map of the Mississippi River: on the memoirs of Mr. Le Sueur, who took with the compass all the turns and detours from the sea to the St. Pierre River, and took the height of the pole in several places.]](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/1fe608f/2147483647/strip/true/crop/400x400+131+0/resize/560x560!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F08%2F10%2F68402c2349a1ad4d8193f374c74d%2Fcapes.png)
