Download or read book From French Community to Missouri Town written by Bonnie Stepenoff and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2006-09-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A small French settlement thrived for half a century on the west bank of the Mississippi River before the Louisiana Purchase made it part of the United States in 1803. But for the citizens of Ste. Genevieve, becoming Americans involved more than simply acknowledging a transfer of power. Bonnie Stepenoff has written an engaging history of Missouri’s oldest permanent settlement to explore what it meant to be Americanized in our country’s early years. Picking up where other studies of Ste. Genevieve leave off, she traces the dramatic changes wrought by the transfer of sovereignty to show the process of social and economic transformation on a young nation’s new frontier. Stepenoff tells how French and Spanish residents—later joined by German immigrants and American settlers—made necessary compromises to achieve order and community, forging a democracy that represented different approaches to such matters as education, religion, property laws, and women’s rights. By examining the town’s historical circumstances, its legal institutions, and especially its popular customs, she shows how Ste. Genevieve differed from other towns along the Mississippi. Stepenoff has plumbed the town’s voluminous archives to share previously untold stories of Ste. Genevieve citizens that reflect how Americanization affected their lives. In these pages we meet a free woman of color who sued a prominent white family for support of her children; a slave who obtained her own freedom and then purchased her daughters’ freedom; a local sheriff who joined Aaron Burr’s conspiracy; and a doctor who treated cholera victims and later became a U.S. senator. More than colorful characters, these are real people shown pursuing justice and liberty under a new flag. The story of Ste. Genevieve serves as a testament to Tocqueville’s observations on American democracy while also challenging some of the commonly held beliefs about that institution. From French Community to Missouri Town provides a better understanding not only of how democracy works but also of what it meant to become American when America was still young.
Download or read book Thad Snow written by Bonnie Stepenoff and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thad Snow (1881-1955) was an eccentric farmer and writer who was best known for his involvement in Missouri's 1939 Sharecropper Protest--a mass highway demonstration in which approximately eleven hundred demonstrators marched to two federal highways to illustrate the plight of the cotton laborers. Snow struggled to make sense of the changing world, and his answers to questions regarding race, social justice, the environment, and international war placed him at odds with many. In Thad Snow, Bonnie Stepenoff explores the world of Snow, providing a full portrait of him. Snow settled in the Missouri Bootheel in 1910--"Swampeast Missouri," as he called it--when it was still largely an undeveloped region of hardwood and cypress swamps. He cleared and drained a thousand acres and became a prominent landowner, highway booster, and promoter of economic development--though he later questioned the wisdom of developing wild land. In the early 1920s, "cotton fever" came to the region, and Snow started producing cotton in the rich southeast Missouri soil. Although he employed sharecroppers, he became a bitter critic of the system that exploited labor and fostered racism. In the 1930s, when a massive flood and the Great Depression heaped misery on the farmworkers, he rallied to their cause. Defying the conventions of his class, he invited the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union (STFU) to organize workers on his land. He became a friend and colleague of Owen Whitfield, an African American minister, who led the Sharecroppers' Roadside Strike of 1939. The successes of this great demonstration convinced Snow that mankind could fight injustice by peaceful means. While America mobilized for World War II, he denounced all war as evil, remaining a committed pacifist until his death in 1955. Shortly before he died, Snow published an autobiographical memoir, From Missouri, in which he affirmed his optimistic belief that people could peacefully change the world. This biography places Snow in the context of his place and time, revealing a unique individual who agonized over racial and economic oppression and environmental degradation. Snow lived, worked, and pondered the connections among these issues in a small rural corner of Missouri, but he thought in global terms. Well-crafted and highly readable, Thad Snow provides an astounding assessment of an agricultural entrepreneur transformed into a social critic and an activist.
Download or read book Franco American Identity Community and La Guiann e written by Anna Servaes and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2015-04-10 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: French traditions in America do not live solely in Louisiana. Franco-American Identity, Community, and La Guiannée travels to Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, and Prairie du Rocher, Illinois, to mark the Franco-American traditions still practiced in both these Midwestern towns. This Franco-American cultural identity has continued for over 250 years, surviving language loss, extreme sociopolitical pressures, and the American Midwest's demands for conformity. Ethnic identity presents itself in many forms, including festivals and traditional celebrations, which take on an even more profound and visible role when language loss occurs. On New Year's Eve, the guionneurs, revelers who participate in the celebration, disguise themselves in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century costume and travel throughout their town, singing and wishing New Year's greetings to other members of the community. This celebration, like such others as Cajun Mardi Gras in Louisiana, Mumming in Ireland and Newfoundland, as well as the Carnaval de Binche, belongs to a category of begging quest festivals that have endured since the Medieval Age. These festivals may have also adapted or evolved from pre-Christian pagan rituals. Anna Servaes produces a historical context for both the development of French American culture as well as La Guiannée in order to understand contemporary identity. She analyzes the celebration, which affirms ethnic community, drawing upon theories by influential anthropologist Victor Turner. In addition, Servaes discusses cultural continuity and its relationship to language, revealing contemporary expressions of Franco-American identity.
Download or read book 1812 in the Americas written by Jean-Marc Serme and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2015-09-18 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together a variety of interesting perspectives on the circumstances and effects of the war in 1812, offering a range of insights, from an exploration of the role religion played in the conflict to an investigation of low literature of the time reacted to it. The book is opened by a contribution from Adam Rothman, who examines the concept of the paracolonial republic to highlight that the US in 1812 was surrounded by monarchical colonial powers and used imperial means against its indigenous populations. In the second essay, Tangi Villerbu explores the way in which the Catholic Church set out to organize the space for its own development west of the Appalachian Mountains in the context of a continental war. Following this, John Dickinson explores the heart of the early hours of the conflict in his account of the northern borderland and the new sense of itself Canada gained after successfully defending its territory against US invasion. Using biography as an efficient type of narrative to account for the complex situations of Native American groups during the war, Sheri Shuck-Hall focuses on the fascinating character of William Weatherford,who joined the traditionalists despite his strong cultural and economic interests among the Muscogee/Creek metis class. This volume also contains an essay by Nelly André on revolutionary women in South America. She points out that too much emphasis on a military-political definition of history has pushed women into the corners of national narratives. Her essay presents a few of these remarkable, sometimes forgotten, heroes. American literature had not yet fully emerged in its own right in 1812. As Ed White demonstrates in his essay, novel production at the time was scant and failed to provide satisfactory accounts of the war. Instead, as the author argues, only poetry was able to keep pace with the flow of events and create national representations. In his essay, Marco Sioli considers the events of the period in their cultural dimensions. He looks at the ways in which the press shaped the perceptions of the war and helped devise a more affirmed national identity despite the poor record of American military deeds. The volume closes with inisghts into another genre that had a major impact on the discussions about going to war against the British Empire: the sermon. Lucia Bergamasco’s careful and close reading of such texts provides the reader with the arguments that shook the nation, such as sectional antagonism, slavery, and political and moral reformation.
Download or read book Missouri Law and the American Conscience written by Kenneth H. Winn and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2016-12-31 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until recently, many of Missouri’s legal records were inaccessible and the existence of many influential, historic cases was unknown. The ten essays in this volume showcase Missouri as both maker and microcosm of American history. Some of the topics are famous: Dred Scott’s slave freedom suit, Virginia Minor’s women’s suffrage case, Curt Flood’s suit against professional baseball, and the Nancy Cruzan “right to die” case. Other essays cover court cases concerning the uneasy incorporation of ethnic and cultural populations into the United States; political loyalty tests during the Civil War; the alleviation of cruelty to poor and criminally institutionalized children; the barring of women to serve on juries decades after they could vote; and the creation of the “Missouri Court Plan,” a national model for judicial selection.
Download or read book 300 Years of the French in Old Mines written by Mark G. Boyer and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2021-07-23 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The village of Old Mines is the oldest settlement in the state of Missouri. Lead miners were in Old Mines as early as 1719. The founding of Old Mines in 1723 coincides with the land grant awarded to Philippe Francois Renault by French authorities on June 26, 1723, to mine lead. Thus, the oldest village in Missouri began as a mining town. In 2023, the village marks three hundred years of the French in Old Mines. This book narrates the history of people in remote Louisiana and how they have kept alive a French heritage of culture and customs. The history of Old Mines is tightly bound to the Catholic faith the French settlers brought with them, the parish they founded, and the church, schools, rectories, and convents they built. The decade of the 2020s is filled with over twenty anniversaries to be marked and celebrated in the oldest mining town in Missouri, itself marking its Bicentennial in 2021. This is not a scholarly writing of history; it is a thirty-chapter narrative, grounded in research, of the continual presence of the French in Old Mines for three hundred years.
Download or read book Cultural Landscapes written by Richard W. Longstreth and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preservation has traditionally focused on saving prominent buildings of historical or architectural significance. Preserving cultural landscapes-the combined fabric of the natural and man-made environments-is a relatively new and often misunderstood idea among preservationists, but it is of increasing importance. The essays collected in this volume-case studies that include the Little Tokyo neighborhood in Los Angeles, the Cross Bronx Expressway, and a rural island in Puget Sound-underscore how this approach can be fruitfully applied. Together, they make clear that a cultural landscape perspective can be an essential underpinning for all historic preservation projects. Contributors: Susan Calafate Boyle, National Park Service; Susan Buggey, U of Montreal; Michael Caratzas, Landmarks Preservation Commission (NYC); Courtney P. Fint, West Virginia Historic Preservation Office; Heidi Hohmann, Iowa State U; Hillary Jenks, USC; Randall Mason, U Penn; Robert Z. Melnick, U of Oregon; Nora Mitchell, National Park Service; Julie Riesenweber, U of Kentucky; Nancy Rottle, U of Washington; Bonnie Stepenoff, Southeast Missouri State U. Richard Longstreth is professor of American civilization and director of the graduate program in historic preservation at George Washington University.
Download or read book Working the Mississippi written by Bonnie Stepenoff and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2015-07-07 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mississippi River occupies a sacred place in American culture and mythology. Often called The Father of Rivers, it winds through American life in equal measure as a symbol and as a topographic feature. To the people who know it best, the river is life and a livelihood. River boatmen working the wide Mississippi are never far from land. Even in the dark, they can smell plants and animals and hear people on the banks and wharves. Bonnie Stepenoff takes readers on a cruise through history, showing how workers from St. Louis to Memphis changed the river and were in turn changed by it. Each chapter of this fast-moving narrative focuses on representative workers: captains and pilots, gamblers and musicians, cooks and craftsmen. Readers will find workers who are themselves part of the country’s mythology from Mark Twain and anti-slavery crusader William Wells Brown to musicians Fate Marable and Louis Armstrong.
Download or read book Missouri written by William E. Parrish and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-04-10 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprehensively captures the robust history of the state of Missouri, from the pre-Columbian period to the present Combining a chronological overview with topical development, this book by a team of esteemed historians presents the rich and varied history of Missouri, a state that has played a pivotal role in the history of the nation. In a clear, engaging style that all students of Missouri history are certain to enjoy, the authors of Missouri: The Heart of the Nation explore such topics as Missouri’s indigenous population, French and Spanish colonialism, territorial growth, statehood, slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, railroads, modernization, two world wars, constitutional change, Civil Rights, political realignments, and the difficult choices that Missourians face in the 21st century. Featuring chapter revisions as well as new maps, photographs, reading lists, a preface, and index, this latest edition of this beloved survey textbook will continue to engage all those celebrating Missouri’s bicentennial. A companion website features a student study guide. Published to commemorate the bicentennial of Missouri statehood in 2021 Features fully updated chapters that bring the historical narrative up to the present Presents numerous images and maps that enrich the coverage of key events Provides suggestions for further reading Missouri: The Heart of the Nation is an excellent book for colleges and universities offering survey courses on state history or state government. It also will appeal to all lovers of American history and to those who call Missouri home.
Download or read book Missouri Roadsides written by Bill Earngey and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recreation sites, Two-lane trivia, Place-Name Histories, Maps and more ...
Download or read book Andr Michaux in North America written by André Michaux and published by University Alabama Press. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Journals and letters, translated from the original French, bring Michaux’s work to modern readers and scientists Known to today’s biologists primarily as the “Michx,” at the end of more than 700 plant names, André Michaux was an intrepid French naturalist. Under the directive of King Louis XVI, he was commissioned to search out and grow new, rare, and never-before-described plant species and ship them back to his homeland in order to improve French forestry, agriculture, and horticulture. He made major botanical discoveries and published them in his two landmark books, Histoire des chênes de l’Amérique (1801), a compendium of all oak species recognized from eastern North America, and Flora Boreali-Americana (1803), the first account of all plants known in eastern North America. Straddling the fields of documentary editing, history of the early republic, history of science, botany, and American studies, André Michaux in North America: Journals and Letters, 1785–1797 is the first complete English edition of Michaux’s American journals. This copiously annotated translation includes important excerpts from his little-known correspondence as well as a substantial introduction situating Michaux and his work in the larger scientific context of the day. To carry out his mission, Michaux traveled from the Bahamas to Hudson Bay and west to the Mississippi River on nine separate journeys, all indicated on a finely rendered, color-coded map in this volume. His writings detail the many hardships—debilitating disease, robberies, dangerous wild animals, even shipwreck—that Michaux endured on the North American frontier and on his return home. But they also convey the soaring joys of exploration in a new world where nature still reigned supreme, a paradise of plants never before known to Western science. The thrill of discovery drove Michaux ever onward, even ultimately to his untimely death in 1802 on the remote island of Madagascar.
Download or read book Dictionary of Missouri Biography written by Lawrence O. Christensen and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 1999-10 with total page 860 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides short biographies on notable men and women from Missouri from a variety of areas including politics, business, agriculture, entertainment, sports, social reform, science and religion.
Download or read book French Roots in the Illinois Country written by Carl J. Ekberg and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Kemper and Leila Williams Book Prize for the Best Book on Louisiana History, French Roots in the Illinois Country creates an entirely new picture of the Illinois country as a single ethnic, economic, and cultural entity. Focusing on the French Creole communities along the Mississippi River, Carl J. Ekberg shows how land use practices such as medieval-style open-field agriculture intersected with economic and social issues ranging from the flour trade between Illinois and New Orleans to the significance of the different mentalities of French Creoles and Anglo-Americans.
Download or read book Cumulative List of Organizations Described in Section 170 c of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 written by and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 1530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Around the Bend written by C. C. Lockwood and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 1998-11-01 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the summer of 1997 renowned nature photographer C. C. Lockwood embarked on a remarkable adventure. First by canoe and then by Grand Canyon–style pontoon raft, he journeyed the length of the Mississippi River—2,320 miles—from its source at Lake Itasca, Minnesota, to its mouth at the Gulf of Mexico. Armed with his camera and computer equipment to transmit stories and pictures to schoolchildren, this “High Tech Huck Finn” trained his lens on spectacular scenes, creating images that vividly depict the life pulsing in and near this vital American artery—water and lands that touch the lives of every American. As Lockwood shows in these brilliant color photographs, the river has many faces. At its birthplace it is nothing more than a trickle among rocks. But as it serpentines south, it slowly grows until, at its end, it pours daily over 420 billion gallons of water into the Gulf of Mexico. Lockwood captures the river in all of its moods: a ghostly foggy morning on the bank; a bright orange sunset over the bends; a quiet snowfall at the headwaters; a sudden rain shower at dusk. He also offers intimate images of the creatures that make their home in the river or along its shores: a whitetail fawn nestled in underbrush; a curious frog peeking out from beneath reeds; a Canada goose marching in line with her goslings; turtles burying themselves in mud. His depiction of the natural beauty of Old Man River is unparalleled. The river comes to appear as a thriving community because Lockwood introduces the people, both ordinary and extraordinary, who live and journey on it. We meet, among others, a performance artist intent on swimming the river’s length; inhabitants of a makeshift houseboat colony near Winona, Minnesota; Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher look-alikes in Hannibal, Missouri; and Willie P., who, with the help of thirty-gallon plastic barrels and paddle wheels, employs a most unusual mode of river transportation—a Toyota Celica hatchback. To illustrate the changing riverscape, Lockwood includes images of some of the businesses and industries that line the river’s banks: casino river boats glittering in the night; the jumping blues clubs of Memphis’ Beale Street; bustling industrial plants and the countless barges and push boats that service them. He also offers a detailed memoir of his trip, as well as his other tours of the river by plane, car, tugboat, and river boat, in a delightful introduction. Lockwood’s photographs depict beautifully the varied aspects of the Mississippi River—flourishing community, vital industrial corridor, and priceless environmental treasure. Through this book, readers can join him on his quest to discover the wonders that lie just “around the bend.”
Download or read book The Dead End Kids of St Louis written by Bonnie Stepenoff and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2010-05-24 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joe Garagiola remembers playing baseball with stolen balls and bats while growing up on the Hill. Chuck Berry had run-ins with police before channeling his energy into rock and roll. But not all the boys growing up on the rough streets of St. Louis had loving families or managed to find success. This book reviews a century of history to tell the story of the “lost” boys who struggled to survive on the city’s streets as it evolved from a booming late-nineteenth-century industrial center to a troubled mid-twentieth-century metropolis. To the eyes of impressionable boys without parents to shield them, St. Louis presented an ever-changing spectacle of violence. Small, loosely organized bands from the tenement districts wandered the city looking for trouble, and they often found it. The geology of St. Louis also provided for unique accommodations—sometimes gangs of boys found shelter in the extensive system of interconnected caves underneath the city. Boys could hide in these secret lairs for weeks or even months at a stretch. Bonnie Stepenoff gives voice to the harrowing experiences of destitute and homeless boys and young men who struggled to grow up, with little or no adult supervision, on streets filled with excitement but also teeming with sharpsters ready to teach these youngsters things they would never learn in school. Well-intentioned efforts of private philanthropists and public officials sometimes went cruelly astray, and sometimes were ineffective, but sometimes had positive effects on young lives. Stepenoff traces the history of several efforts aimed at assisting the city’s homeless boys. She discusses the prison-like St. Louis House of Refuge, where more than 80 percent of the resident children were boys, and Father Dunne's News Boys' Home and Protectorate, which stressed education and training for more than a century after its founding. She charts the growth of Skid Row and details how historical events such as industrialization, economic depression, and wars affected this vulnerable urban population. Most of these boys grew up and lived decent, unheralded lives, but that doesn’t mean that their childhood experiences left them unscathed. Their lives offer a compelling glimpse into old St. Louis while reinforcing the idea that society has an obligation to create cities that will nurture and not endanger the young.
