The Possum Plague of 1929

It’s September of 1929, and apple harvest season is nearly upon us.  The local orchard owners are sure their yields will be high, but the nearby marsupials have other plans.  Opossums descended on the fruit trees in droves, devouring apples from the ground, baskets, and straight from the branches.  As word began to spread from…

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Gerald Brooks: Lincoln Band Director

 Gerald Brooks was born on January 6, 1913 in Quincy, Illinois. After his mother passed away at a young age, he moved to Hannibal, Missouri and attended Douglas High School. While at Douglas, he was greatly influenced by his own band teacher, Martin A. Lewis. Gerald Brooks graduated from Lincoln University in Jefferson City in…

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70th Anniversary of the Great Cobra Scare

2023 is already shaping up to be a big year for Springfield!   This year also happens to be the 70th anniversary of the Great Cobra Scare of 1953.  If you haven’t heard the details yet, be prepared to learn your new favorite story from Springfield’s history.  In August of 1953, Rio Mowrer owned a…

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Bob Barker: Springfield Citizen, Television Legend

Bob Barker was born in Darrington, Washington on December 12th, 1923.  He spent most of his childhood on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in Mission, South Dakota, where he was listed as an enrolled member of the Sioux tribe. His family moved to Springfield, where Barker graduated Central High School and attended Drury University on a…

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Springfield, Missouri: The Birthplace of Route 66

If you’ve spent even a few hours in Springfield, you’re bound to see a sign declaring it “The Birthplace of Route 66”.  This may sound like a bold claim, considering that the route begins and ends in Chicago and Los Angeles.  While our city is not the start of the physical highway, it is where…

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Notable Women in Agriculture

Around 12,000 years ago our hunter-gatherer ancestors began farming, providing themselves with a larger and more easily accessible food source.  The first tenders to these crops would have been men and women, working together to ensure the availability of their food. Since then, we have learned about famous and influential male farmers such as George…

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Rabbi Karl Richter

Rabbi Karl Richter was born and grew up in Stuttgart, Germany. He received his higher education at the University and Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau. He was ordained in 1935 and served two major congregations in Germany until the destruction of his temple in Mannheim during the infamous “Kristallnacht” in November, 1938.   As the Nazis…

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The Sarah Gorham Graham Case

Springfield, Missouri has a history of sensational true crime cases, but one of the oldest is the tale of Sarah Gorham Graham.  Sarah was born in December of 1851, and little is known about her until her marriage to George Graham in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1871.  George spent most of the first years of…

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Betty Love, Photojournalist

Betty Love graduated from Drury University in the early 1930’s and almost immediately began her teaching career.  She taught art to elementary and junior high school students for almost a decade before finding work at the Springfield Daily News and Leader-Press in 1941.  She was meant to be a temporary replacement for their cartoonist, but…

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“The Unsinkable” Molly Brown

Born in 1867 and raised in Hannibal, Missouri, Margaret “Molly” Brown would go on to live a life of wealth, adventure, and activism.  The daughter of Irish immigrants, Molly Tobin went to school until she was 13 when she dropped out to work in a tobacco factory and help support her family.  Once adults, she…

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