Southeast grad discovers Taft's 1909 remarks in Cape Girardeau

This story is updated.

Rob Lewis has long been curious about what President William Howard Taft said nearly 112 years ago when the 17-boat flotilla carrying the nation's 27th president and many other political dignitaries stopped at the Cape Girardeau waterfront early in the morning of Oct. 26, 1909.

The president was on his way to New Orleans at the invitation of the Lakes-to-Gulf Deep Waterway Association, which was seeking congressional funding for a deeper navigation channel along the Mississippi River because steamboats were getting stuck en route.

Taft made a speech at Academic Hall on what was then known as the campus of Third District Normal School, now Southeast Missouri State University.

In his first year as the nation's chief executive, Taft stopped in Cape Girardeau at the invitation of Lewis' great-grandfather, Edward Regenhardt.

"I did some research on the Library of Congress website a couple of years ago, looking for Taft's remarks but couldn't find them then," said Lewis, a SEMO grad and a 1969 alumnus of Cape Girardeau Central High School.

"In looking again Wednesday, I discovered them. The Library had recently posted Taft's digitized papers on the site."

Early in Taft's one-page speech, which can be viewed on Lewis' personal website, www.robsgenealogy.com, is a reference to his Cape Girardeau patron, Regenhardt.

"This unusual sensation of seeing the man over there, added to the great pleasure of walking up here with a gentleman who is larger than I am, makes my coming to Cape Girardeau most noted and marked as far as my personal experience in my whole trip," Taft said.

Regenhardt, said Lewis, stood 6-foot-5. Taft's height is listed as 6 feet even.

Taft made a brief mention of New Madrid, Missouri, in his remarks, but concluded them by referring to the purpose of his journey down the Mississippi -- a river he called the "Father of Waters."

"Now, my friends, we are on a journey not I think of discovery but a voyage intended on the part of those who are engaged in it and who projected it, to call attention to the necessity for taking up in a serious and practical way the improvement of our waterways," the nation's chief executive said.

Lewis said his research indicated Taft had a cold on the morning of his Cape Girardeau stop and was a bit hoarse that day.

Taft was the first president to visit Cape Girardeau.