History

Renovations to the Common Pleas Courthouse and Annex, estimated to cost more than $3.7 million, are among the projects outlined by city staff in a rolling, five-year capital improvements plan. Development services director Alex McElroy outlined the plan during Tuesday’s city council study session...

FULTON, Mo. -- The Missouri museum honoring Winston Churchill will mark its 50th anniversary in May with events including relatives of the famed British prime minister. Relatives of presidents Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon also are scheduled to take part in the celebration May 3 to 5 at the National Churchill Museum on the campus of Westminster College in Fulton, the town where Churchill delivered his famous "Iron Curtain" speech in 1946...

Controversy was brewing in 1915. The city of Cape Girardeau had the opportunity to buy the old fairgrounds for development as a city park. To make this happen, voters would need to approve a bond issue. Louis Houck came out in opposition to the plan, arguing that the city should develop other parks as well. ...

GLEN ALLEN, Mo. — The Village of Glen Allen in Bollinger County was named after Thomas Allen, who donated some land for the community’s development; however, the Rhodes family was the first to lay out land parcels that established the town. Incidentally, there never was a guy named Glen. “Glen” comes from the town’s valley-like location. But, if there had been a Glen Allen, he’d probably be doing flip-flops in the grave regarding the constant wrangling over how to spell this village’s name...

NEW YORK -- Carol Channing, the lanky, ebullient musical comedy star who delighted American audiences over 5,000 performances as the scheming Dolly Levi in "Hello, Dolly!" on Broadway and beyond, has died. She was 97. Publicist B. Harlan Boll said Channing died of natural causes at 12:31 a.m. Tuesday in Rancho Mirage, California. Boll said Channing had twice suffered strokes in the last year...

NEW YORK -- It's been 10 years, but there isn't anything Tripp Harris doesn't remember about the cold January day he cheated death on US Airways flight 1549. The jolt when the plane collided with a flock of geese and the engines stopped moments after takeoff from New York City's LaGuardia Airport. ...

At 623 N. Main St. is a quaint brick French Colonial house and smokehouse, witness to many neighborhood changes since coming into existence 162 years ago. Deemed one of the oldest homes in Cape Girardeau, the Reynolds House sits forlorn as the world seems to pass it by unnoticed...

Samuel Snipes, a white lawyer who held off an angry mob while representing the first black family to move into the all-white development of Levittown, Pennsylvania, has died. He was 99. Snipes died Dec. 31 at his family farm in Morrisville, Pennsylvania, according to family members...

Local historians often mention Old Bethel Church, built in 1806 and the first non-Catholic Church in old Louisiana Territory. Less well-known are the Baptist churches that grew from or followed Bethel. These began organizing within 10 years of the building of Bethel, and included Hebron Church. ...

Old Town Cape has received a $10,000 grant from the Missouri Humanities Council in support of the Ivers Square United States Colored Troop Statue at Common Pleas Courthouse in downtown Cape Girardeau. The namesake, Ivers Square, honors the memory of Pvt. James Ivers, 56th U.S. Colored Infantry and his wife Harriet...

A recent tour of Cape Girardeau's 1850s-era landscape, buildings, and culture stirred the legends of area tunnels and Underground Railroad activity into conversation. Court records in Perry and Cape Girardeau Counties provide evidence that abolitionists -- America's first civil rights advocates -- were indeed engaged in secret work to usher slaves toward freedom, but provide no proof Cape's utilitarian tunnels played a role...

In a year filled with heightened political vitriol, two deaths brought the nation together to remember men who represented a seemingly bygone era of U.S. politics. George H.W. Bush was a president, vice president, congressman, CIA director and Navy pilot during World War II, where he flew 58 missions and was shot down over the Pacific. ...

On Friday, KFVS12’s “The Breakfast Show” said goodbye to longtime anchor Jim Burns, whose retirement began after the show aired. Burns has served nearly 40 years at the television station — for 36 years, he anchored the morning show. Burns was hired in 1979 by then-news director Mike Shain...

On Oct. 29, 1931, Cape Girardeau attorney and active civic leader, Russell Lee Dearmont, announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for governor of Missouri. He ran on the platform of having previous state government experience, wanting to reorganize state government, and supporting the farmer and teacher. ...

LOS ANGELES -- Penny Marshall, who starred in "Laverne & Shirley" before becoming one of the top-grossing female directors in Hollywood, has died. She was 75. Mashall's publicist, Michelle Bega, said Marshall passed away in her Hollywood Hills, Calif., home on Monday due to complications from diabetes...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Fifty years ago on Christmas Eve, a tumultuous year of assassinations, riots and war drew to a close in heroic and hopeful fashion with the three Apollo 8 astronauts reading from the Book of Genesis on live TV as they orbited the moon...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- The Missouri State Capitol recently completed an effort to restore and conserve the building's murals that provide visitors with snapshots of the state's history. Neosho-born artist Thomas Hart Benton's "A Social History of the State of Missouri" was a focus of the preservation project, the Joplin Globe reported. ...

Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver of Cape Girardeau is best remembered for his role in popularizing the "Show Me State" motto. However, a closer look at his life reveals a politician who started out with high hopes but became entangled in minor scandals and the target of ridicule...

It took a little longer than developer Jason Coalter had hoped, but what was once a run-down red brick building on the northeast corner of Lorimier and William streets is now restored and full of functioning apartments. "It's been a long process, and we slowed down to work on other projects and then we got back on it... ...

Those visiting the Cape Girardeau County History Center in uptown Jackson will be met with a display of 20 trees, each displaying unique themes with decorations representing local organizations, clubs, churches and businesses. Barbara Lohr, former mayor of Jackson and history center docent, said this is the fourth year the center has hosted the display. This year’s theme is “Through the Eyes of a Child.”...

A plan pushed by Cape Girardeau city officials to revitalize two run-down buildings and a vacant lot on Good Hope Street collapsed after the properties were sold by the county government for back taxes. City development services director Alex McElroy said the tax sale in August of this year ended the development effort before it could get started...

Since working with the Founder's Collection at the Cape Girardeau County History Center, I've acquired an appreciation for the Whitelaw family of Jackson and Cape Girardeau. Turn back the clock to the early 1800s. Nicholas Whitelaw and his wife, Elizabeth (Beaszley), came to Missouri from Fredericksburg, Virginia, in 1818. ...

Six of the oldest churches within the Gordonville and Tilsit area will be festooned with Christmas decorations during the fourth annual Southern Country Church Tour this weekend. Marsha Birk is helping coordinate this year's event. She said her home church is St. James United Church of Christ in Jackson, one of the churches featured on the tour...

JOPLIN, Mo. -- Missouri and Kansas supporters are optimistic the iconic Route 66 is on the road to becoming part of a National Historic Trail. U.S. Sens. Tom Udall and Jim Inhofe announced last week a bipartisan bill would include Route 66 in the National Trails System Act, which would allow the National Park Service to award federal grants for preservation, development and promotion along the route from Chicago to Los Angeles, The Joplin Globe reported. ...

HOUSTON -- They met at a Christmas dance. She was 16. He was 17. Three years later they were married. The couple stayed together for 73 years, becoming the longest-married couple in presidential history. "George Bush knows how I feel," Barbara Bush had said. "He is the hero. ... He is my hero."...

In the 20 years since "Recipe Swap" first landed on the pages of the Southeast Missourian, columnist Susan McClanahan has seen vast changes in the way her column gets to the newsroom, but the center of her work hasn't changed. Food. It's food, and it's commentary...

Associated Press HOUSTON (AP) -- George H.W. Bush, a patrician New Englander whose presidency soared with the coalition victory over Iraq in Kuwait, but then plummeted in the throes of a weak economy that led voters to turn him out of office after a single term, has died. He was 94...

Two hundred years ago today, a 25-year-old adventurer and his companion spent the day south of present-day Dora, Missouri, grinding corn and making moccasins. The young man was Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, his companion Levi Pettibone. The two had left Potosi, Missouri, on Nov. ...

Creation of a new bronze statue of a black, Civil War-era, Union soldier has begun with a view toward unveiling it in Ivers Square in downtown Cape Girardeau next summer. Steve Hoffman, a history professor and coordinator of the Historic Preservation Program at Southeast Missouri State University, said Tuesday the process is going “really well.”...

John was born in Somerset County, Maryland, to enslaved parents owned by William Gale. When John was 6, he and his father, Ned, were separated from the family, sold to the Campbell Brothers, notorious slave traders, working markets in Baltimore and New Orleans. ...

Southeast Missouri has experienced flooding of the Mississippi River hundreds of times since at least 1844. The marks on the floodwall in Cape Girardeau denote flood stage heights in 1844, 1943, 1973, and 1993. One that is not listed is the flood that occurred in April 1922. Rains swept through Missouri and other states on April 10. This deluge caused tornadoes, property damage, deaths, and subsequent area flooding...

LOS ANGELES -- Katherine MacGregor, who played petty, gossiping mother Harriet Oleson on TV's "Little House on the Prairie," has died, a representative said Wednesday. She was 93. MacGregor died Tuesday at the Motion Picture and Television Fund retirement community in Los Angeles, said Tony Sears, who is acting as her attorney...

The second phase of the Ivers Square three-phase renovation is nearly complete, with the third and final phase expected to begin in March 2019, according to Old Town Cape special projects coordinator Sarah LaVenture. Gazebo and site renovations are moving forward as anticipated and there have not been any complications, LaVenture confirmed by email Tuesday...

ATHENS, Greece -- Greece's culture ministry said Tuesday archaeologists have located the first tangible remains of a lost city the ancient Greeks believed was first settled by Trojan captives of war after the sack of Troy. A ministry statement said excavations from September to early October in the southern Greek region of the Peleponnese turned up "proof of the existence of the ancient city" of Tenea, until now known mostly from ancient texts...

Bollinger County Museum of Natural History in Marble Hill, Missouri, is commemorating the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I with an exhibit highlighting relics gathered by locals, including a compilation of heirlooms by Lisa Santi. Santi serves on the Will Mayfield Heritage Foundation board and is allowing the museum to display her well-preserved 100-year-old U.S. Navy artifacts, once owned by her great-uncle, Samuel Alvin Baker...

LOS ANGELES -- Stan Lee, the creative dynamo who revolutionized the comic book and helped make billions for Hollywood by introducing human frailties in Marvel superheroes such as Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four and the Incredible Hulk, died Monday. He was 95...

ST. LOUIS -- A memorial to St. Louis area service members who have died in war was mostly neglected and ignored for years -- but not anymore. The memorial, which was erected in 1936 and dedicated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, has undergone a two-year, $30 million renovation more than doubling its exhibit space, added air conditioning, new wiring and more assembly spaces...

It was quite an incentive package that Spanish authorities offered to settlers willing to move to the Cape Girardeau District: free land and no taxes. The settlers just had to pay a small fee to have their chosen land surveyed. When the Americans took control following the Louisiana Purchase, the luxury of tax-free living quickly disappeared. Even worse, the United States government was reluctant at best to confirm the land grants that the Spanish had promised...

When Grace Jueneman and her daughter, Rodney Jueneman Arbeiter, walked into the Cape Girardeau County History Center on the evening of Friday, Nov. 2, 2018, living history arrived. In 1965, Grace married her husband, Donald Frederick Jueneman, who was a direct descendant of Cape Girardeau founder Louis Lorimier...

JERUSALEM -- More than a decade before the Nazis seized power in Germany, Albert Einstein was on the run and already fearful for his country's future, according to a newly revealed handwritten letter. His longtime friend and fellow Jew, German Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau, had just been assassinated by right-wing extremists and police had warned the noted physicist his life could be in danger, too...

NEW YORK -- New research strengthens the case people used the chocolate ingredient cacao in South America 5,400 years ago, underscoring the seed's radical transformation into today's Twix bars and M&M candies. Tests indicate traces of cacao on artifacts from an archaeological site in Ecuador, according to a study published last week. That's about 1,500 years older than cacao's known domestication in Central America...

In the 1970s, Larry Braun could be found in the South China Sea, serving in the United States Navy on the USS Midway. The 66 - year – old Vietnam War veteran never wouldhave anticipated back then that four decades later, he would be a retired chemist with a love for digital art and photography...

Delegates attending the 21st Annual Encampment of the Department of Missouri of the Grand Army of The Republic gathered along Themis Street, at the foot of the Common Pleas Courthouse terraces, for a photo in May 1902. Members of a band — possibly Schuchert’s concert band — stand in the foreground, along with spectators. In the center of the crowd, marked with flags and most sporting hats with the distinctive G.A.R. badge, are the Union Civil War veterans...

Documents, pictures and other artifacts from several of Cape Girardeau County’s founding families are coming home, after years in a private collection in Texas, and those involved with the collection’s curation say its importance can’t be overstated...

One hundred thirteen years ago, much was changing in uptown Jackson. Discussion on the street corners in 1905 centered around the replacement of the old brick courthouse of 1872, even though it was certainly more accommodating than the log structure mentioned in Louis Houck's "History of Missouri." Many wanted a new edifice which would be the county's seat of justice and a safe place to keep the county's records...

The Jackson school building once serving the district's segregated black students has been named to the Missouri Alliance for Historic Preservation's Places in Peril list for the second year in a row, but school district officials say the building is not in immediate danger...

The owner of historic property along Bloomfield Road should not be entitled to "heritage value" compensation for land taken to construct street improvements and a recreational trail, an attorney for the City of Cape Girardeau told a panel of appellate judges Wednesday...

BOSTON -- James "Whitey" Bulger, the murderous Boston gangster who benefited from a corrupt relationship with the FBI before spending 16 years as one of America's most wanted men, died in federal prison. He was 89. Bulger was found unresponsive Tuesday morning at the U.S. ...

Cape Girardeau’s downtown has a hotel again for the first time in 47 years: the Marriott Courtyard hotel is open for business, said Jeff Maurer, co-developer of the project. The hotel has 91 guest rooms, a conference room, fitness center and laundry, Maurer said, and is actually made up of two structures joined by a third, a free-standing tower in between...