© 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

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.” 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.)
  • Local lore holds that the cemeteries between West High and West Breton streets in Potosi are haunted. What appears to be a single cemetery is three: the City Cemetery, the Old Masonic Cemetery, and the Potosi Presbyterian Cemetery. One of the most gruesome stories behind the tales of haunting involves the murder of five members of the Lapine family, all buried in the City Cemetery.
  • 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.
  • Shady Grove Cemetery, recently listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is the final resting place of over 250 African Americans who lived in and near Cape Girardeau. Many were born enslaved but lived to see emancipation and life into the early 1900s. Among these was Charlotte (Gordon) (Giboney) Cook Holmes, whose remarkable story spanned more than 90 years.
  • Academic Hall is the centerpiece of the Southeast Missouri State University campus. The construction of Academic after the destruction of Old Normal by fire did not happen without one unfortunate bump in the road to completion.
  • The construction of the railroad system in Southeast Missouri by entrepreneur Louis Houck and others provided improved transportation. This improvement serves as the background for one tale of a teenage Wayne County couple from 1916.
  • Prior to settlement by Europeans, the Missouri Ozarks had vast forests of shortleaf pine, estimated at 6.6 million acres. Pines grew well at drier sites on ridgetops and west and southwest-facing slopes in rocky or sandy soils. Early stories tell of forests so open that a rider could gallop through without striking a branch.
  • The early days of the Civil War in Missouri in 1861 were chaotic. Union commanders and sympathizers lived in fear of secessionists in eastern Missouri, especially those under the command of Col. M. Jeff Thompson in Southeast Missouri. One of the steamers running on the Mississippi River at this time was often pressed into service in support of Union troop movements.
  • 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.