In early 1882, three would-be entrepreneurs from Illinois, Dr. Henry Clay Fish, Richard P. Dobbs and James G. Christian, tested the waters of several springs in Perry County.

The road to getting federal land into private hands through purchase was often complicated in the early 1800s.

William H. McLane, born July 6, 1816, was the youngest of six sons of John McLane and Lydia Lawrence McLane.

Perhaps the most prominent man and largest landowner from Lincoln County, North Carolina, to move to Missouri in the early 1800s was Captain Henry Whitener.

Early settlers in the old lead belt that became Washington and adjacent counties were French until the late 1790s.

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.

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.