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…
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…
On the Diamond: African American Baseball in Springfield
Baseball in Springfield was segregated either by law or by custom until the 1950s. Information about the early African American teams is largely unavailable. The Hyde Park All Stars, sometimes known as the “Stars” took on all comers. They were an African American, semi-professional, barnstorming baseball team. They traveled to other cities and played teams…
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…
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…
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…
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…
“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…
New Springfield, Missouri Flag
March 1st, 2022, at 2 pm, the new Springfield flag will be raised on the flagpole on the Square for the first time. While the new city flag has been a hot topic of conversation in the last few months, the new design was actually first proposed back in 2017. After multiple presentations before City…
Andy Payne, Winner of the Transcontinental Footrace
The Transcontinental Footrace of 1928 was a daring event, putting hundreds of men to the test of endurance, speed, and determination. This race was organized by the nation’s first sports agent, Charles C. Pyle. It was set to begin on March 4th, 1928 in Los Angeles and finish some time in May in New York…