State Historical Society president: History is 'the story of people'

Fall-harvest colors and floral arrangements decorated the Cape Girardeau County Historical Society’s Autumn Banquet on Saturday night at the Jackson Civic Center.

Established in 1926, the Cape Girardeau County Historical Society first began hosting annual banquets, but the tradition was lost in the late 1970s and 1980s until the society’s current president, Carla Jordan, and a team of volunteers restored the tradition.

“This banquet is a journey of love for me as the director of the [Cape Girardeau County] History Center and the 47 active volunteers,” Jordan said. “It’s our thank you to Cape Girardeau County.”

The event has grown in attendance since its return, with recent keynote speakers including Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh Jr. in 2016 and Frank Nickell, professor emeritus of history at Southeast Missouri State University, in 2015.

After a meal catered by Jackson restaurant Tractors and a Civil War-themed concert by Barefoot on Sunday, State Historical Society of Missouri president and former Missourinet news director Bob Priddy delivered the evening’s keynote speech to an audience of about 120 history enthusiasts.

"Barefoot on Sunday" perform songs of the American Civil War during the Cape Girardeau County Historical Society's 2017 Autumn Banquet held Nov. 4, 2017, at the Jackson Civic Center.BEN MATTHEWS

“We want to develop a closer relationship with historical societies, wherever they are,” he said. “The fact that there’s been this rekindling of history in Cape Girardeau and Jackson, I think, is very healthy.”

His historical overviews gave detailed accounts of the wardrobe, food supply and health risks for Missouri soldiers during the Civil War and gave “a human face” to the era through excerpts from Cape Girardeau County publications of the time.

The speech also detailed plans for the Center for Missouri Studies that is under construction in Columbia, Missouri, and will serve as the State Historical Society’s headquarters upon its completion in March 2019.

Although distant from Cape Girardeau County, locals can access the repository of state history through the Cape Girardeau Research Center, located at 347 N. Pacific St. on the Southeast campus.

“We have an obligation to everyone in the state,” he said. “For example, we have 54 million pages on microfilm dating to 1808 ... the first newspaper published in Missouri. So we have all of that, and if people down here want to look at any of those newspapers, we’ll send them down.”

Cape Girardeau County Historical Society vice president James Baughn introduces State Historical Society of Missouri president Bob Priddy at the 2017 Autumn Banquet, held Nov. 4, 2017, at the Jackson Civic Center.BEN MATTHEWS ~ bmatthews@semissourian.com

Despite growing up in Illinois, Priddy’s 40 years reporting Capitol news for Missourinet radio network led him to acquire a wealth of historical knowledge about Missouri.

He has written “Across Our Wide Missouri,” a three-volume book series about Missouri’s history, as well as two books on art in Missouri’s Captiol, and is currently writing a sixth book focused on the history of the Missouri Capitol.

“History isn’t just something dull and dusty, and sits on a shelf somewhere,” Priddy said. “History is really, very much alive. It’s the story of people, and we have records of people in the state historical site — diaries and letters and photographs and all the newspaper accounts.

“So it’s pretty important that people know about their history and study it, and unfortunately, we have a lot of folks that seem to be so focused on looking only at screens, not at faces, and looking only at webpages instead of history, generally. There’s a lot of understanding of history that we don’t have these days.”

bmatthews@semissourian.com

Guests enjoy hor d'oeuvres before dinner at the Cape Girardeau County Historical Society's 2017 Autumn Banquet held Nov. 4, 2017, at the Jackson Civic Center.BEN MATTHEWS

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