News & Announcements

October 26, 2009

State Historical Society Annual Meeting

Members of The State Historical Society of Missouri will hold their annual meeting October 31, 2009, at the Tiger Hotel in downtown Columbia. This day-long event will feature professional development workshops, a silent auction of valuable art, sports, and history items, research and publication awards, lunch in the hotel’s Grand Ballroom, and a one-woman play about the life of Jane Clemens, mother of Missouri’s most noted author, Mark Twain.

Morning workshops will teach participants about preserving paper and three-dimensional objects in museums and historical societies throughout the state with three sessions: “Paper Preservation 101” with Claudia Powell, document conservation specialist at the University of Missouri-Columbia Western Historical Manuscript Collection; “Collections Preservation” led by Linda Eikmeier Endersby, assistant director of the Missouri State Museum and Jefferson Landing State Historic Site; and “In Storage and On Display” featuring Greig Thompson, the Society’s chief museum preparator.

Executive Director Gary R. Kremer and Society President Doug Crews will give the annual report at 11:30 a.m., highlighting accomplishments from the past year, defining future opportunities, and making awards to accomplished scholars in Missouri history. The $500 Mary C. Neth Prize for the best article on women or gender issues in the past two volumes of the Missouri Historical Review will be given to Dr. Kimberly A. Schreck, Washington University, for “The Patriarch, His ‘Wives,’ His ‘Slaves,’ and His ‘Children’: Contested Wills in the Case of Keen v. Keen.” The Lewis E. Atherton Thesis and Dissertation Awards will be made to recognize outstanding scholarship in Missouri history and to honor Atherton, a former trustee and president of the Society and longtime professor in the University of Missouri Department of History. The $500 Atherton Thesis Prize will go to Peter K. Johnson of Blue Springs for “The Origins and Nature of Indian Slavery in Colonial St. Louis,” and the $1,000 Atherton Dissertation Prize will be awarded to Dr. Adam Arenson, Assistant Professor of History, University of Texas-El Paso, for “City of Manifest Destiny: St. Louis and the Cultural Civil War, 1848-1877.” Carolyn Gilman of the Missouri History Museum in St. Louis will receive the Society’s $750 annual Missouri Historical Review best article award for “L’Anneé du Coup: The Battle of St. Louis, 1780.” And finally, Professor Jay H. Buckley of Brigham Young University will be awarded both the 2009 State Historical Society of Missouri Book Award ($1,000) and the Eagleton-Waters Book Award ($1,500) for his book William Clark: Indian Diplomat. The late Senator Thomas F. Eagleton and Society trustee Henry J. Waters III established the Eagleton-Waters biennial award for recognition of the best work in Missouri political history.

The annual Distinguished Service Award will be given to W. Raymond Wood, Professor Emeritus in the University of Missouri Department of Anthropology. Wood is a longtime supporter and researcher at the Society and the Western Historical Manuscript Collection. Professor Wood is a speaker for the Society’s Missouri History Speakers’ Bureau, has served as a consultant for Society exhibitions and presentations, offered public programs for Society audiences, and has published in the Missouri Historical Review.

A luncheon will be held at 12:30 p.m., followed by MoHiP Theatre’s (Missouri History in Performance) production of Miz Jane, a one-woman play about the life of Jane Lampton Clemens, mother of writer and humorist Mark Twain. Talented mid-Missouri artists Jane Accurso and Dierik Leonhard will support the play with period music.
New to this year’s annual meeting will be a silent auction to include a watercolor landscape painting by Frank Stack, a Mizzou Tiger basketball autographed by head coach Mike Anderson, an original Thomas Hart Benton print, a reproduction of an 1836 map of Missouri, an assortment of wine, and Panera’s “Bread for a Year.”

The general public is welcome and encouraged to attend The State Historical Society of Missouri’s Annual Meeting. The fee for the meeting, luncheon, and entertainment is $30 for members and $35 for nonmembers.

Reservations will be taken through October 28, 2009, online or by calling (573) 882-7083. Free parking is available in the Cherry Street Garage across from the Tiger Hotel, and the hotel is handicap accessible.

posted @ 10:14 AM

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October 09, 2009

Mud and Fire: Mormon diarists cross Iowa, 1846

The Atherton Lecture Committee, University of Missouri, Department of History, is pleased to present

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
300th Anniversary Professor,Harvard University

Monday, November 9
7:00pm
Keller Auditorium - MU Campus
(Geological Sciences Building)

In 1846, more than 14,000 Mormons (or Latter-day Saints) crossed from Nauvoo, Illinois to Council Bluffs, Iowa. They faced blizzards, thunderstorms, mud and snakes and the fear that the vigilantes who had driven them from Missouri ten years before would resume their attacks. But the greatest difficulties did not come from their enemies or from the elements, but from the demanding ideals of their faith. Their remarkably candid diaries provide unexpected insights into religious and political culture in 19th-century America.

Professor Ulrich is probably best- known for her books Well-behaved Women Seldom Make History and A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard based on Her Diary, 1785-1812.

Plan to join us at the Cherry Street Wine Cellar and Bistro for a reception with Professor Ulrich following the lecture - 505 Cherry Street

With special thanks to the office of the Dean of the College of Arts & Science

posted @ 9:14 AM

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October 07, 2009

National Teach-In on Veterans History

HISTORY, together with the Veterans History Project of the Library of Congress, will host a National Teach-In on Veterans History on Wednesday, October 21, 2009, at 12pm EST. Educators and students nationwide can tune-in and view this live webcast online at www.veterans.com. The webcast will be broadcast live from the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. [more...]

posted @ 11:01 AM

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October 05, 2009

Monthly Staff Meeting

The Society will be closed from 8-9:00 a.m. Thursday, October 8 for an all-staff meeting.

posted @ 11:25 AM

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October 01, 2009

Water Damage at The State Historical Society of Missouri

At approximately 5:30 p.m. yesterday, September 30, 2009, State Historical Society of Missouri Associate Director Lynn Wolf Gentzler was notified by University of Missouri Ellis Library security personnel of a water leak in a storage room of the Society’s headquarters in Ellis Library on the university campus. Upon inspection, Gentzler learned that the “water leak” was the consequence of a malfunctioning sprinkler head from the fire suppression system in a room used to store duplicate copies of documents and publications. The malfunctioning sprinkler triggered the Ellis Library fire alarm, which, in turn, alerted Columbia firefighters who arrived on the scene within minutes. There was no fire.

Gentzler quickly notified Society director Gary Kremer and other Society employees, who assembled immediately to assess the damage to collections and begin the cleanup operation. Damage was confined to multiple, backup copies of state documents, primarily Missouri state agency reports from the 1970s to the early 1990s. Missouri statute provides for the deposit of multiple copies of such reports with the State Historical Society.

No unique, one-of-a-kind materials were damaged. Society staff members are working with university fire personnel to identify and replace aged and potentially faulty sprinkler heads such as the one that precipitated this incident. At no time were any original manuscripts or rare books in danger. Nor was there any threat to the Society’s rich art collection that contains scores of works by Missouri’s two most famous artists, George Caleb Bingham and Thomas Hart Benton. Indeed, contrary to earlier reports, the Society’s art gallery and art storage area contains no sprinkler system.

Cleanup by Society staff will continue through the day on October 1, 2009, with the hope that the process will be completed by the end of the week, October 2. Normal patron services at the Society will not be interrupted by the ongoing cleanup and restoration efforts.

posted @ 2:07 PM

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