Missouri flag designer Marie Watkins Oliver getting bust at state Capitol

The Cape Girardeau woman mostly responsible for designing Missouri’s flag will be honored with a bust in the Hall of Famous Missourians at the state Capitol.

Marie Watkins Oliver, who died in 1944 at the age of 90, created and designed the flag in her home at 740 North St. in Cape Girardeau. Oliver is being honored more than 100 years after her flag design was adopted by Missouri. She was appointed the chairwoman of a committee assigned by the Daughters of the American Revolution to prepare a design for the flag. She studied and researched designs for several months and, with the help of local artist Mary Kochtitzky, came up with the flag’s design.

Her husband, state Sen. Robert Burett Oliver, first a prosecutor then a senator, prepared and sent to her nephew, state Sen. Arthur L. Oliver of Caruthersville, a draft of a bill to establish the state flag. But the passage of the bill did not come easily, according to Southeast Missourian archives.

This bronze sculpture is a permanent display in the historic Oliver-Leming House in Cape Girardeau.Jon K. Rust ~ Southeast Missourian

The original flag was designed on paper, and was introduced to the Missouri Legislature in 1909, but did not pass out of the House of Representatives. In 1911, the original flag was destroyed when the Capitol building burned. Marie Oliver then again set to work making another flag, which was finally approved as the official Missouri flag in 1913, when another nephew, Charles C. Oliver, representative of Cape Girardeau County in the General Assembly, introduced the bill. The flag became the official banner of Missouri on March 22, 1913, according to archives.

Marie Oliver was born Jan. 11, 1854, in Ray County and was a graduate of Richmond College.

The bill to include Oliver into the Hall of Famous Missourians was sponsored by state Rep. Dean Plocher.