Our Missouri

This episode features a conversation with Alex Primm about his new book, “Ozark Voices: Oral Histories from the Heartland,” and his 40+ year career alongside the rivers, gravel bars, forests, and people of the Missouri Ozarks.

Episode Image: Agent Tom Wright at the Lake of the Ozarks, 1953 [Missouri Ruralist Photographs (P0030), SHSMO]

About the Guest: Alex Primm has been a freelance oral historian since the 1980s. He has worked on projects in the Ozarks for the U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Forest Service, and the United States Army. His book, “Ozark Voices: Oral Histories from the Heartland,” was published by McFarland.

If you missed her keynote address at the 66th Missouri Conference on History, don't worry, because Sydney J. Norton joined host Sean Rost to discuss her new book, Fighting for a Free Missouri: German Immigrants, African Americans, and the Issue of Slavery.

Episode Image: Arnold Krekel, date unknown [Mit Feder Und Hammer: The German Experience in St. Louis Collection (S0941), SHSMO]

About the Guest:

Sydney J. Norton is an independent scholar, translator, and educator in St. Louis. While teaching German at Saint Louis University, she curated "German Immigrant Abolitionists: Fighting for a Free Missouri," an exhibition that opened at the Center for Global Citizenship, and that traveled to the Deutschheim State Historic Site in Hermann. Her research for this project and her close collaboration with colleagues in related fields inspired her recently published collection of essays: Fighting for a Free Missouri: German Immigrants, African Americans, and the Issue of Slavery. Norton earned her doctorate in German literature and cultural studies from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Her publications include books and articles on contemporary German art and literature. Weimar-era performing and visual arts, and the German abolitionist movement in the United States. Norton currently teaches German at St. Louis Community College, Forest Park, and the German School Association of St. Louis. She is on the library staff at Concordia Historical Institute. 

In this episode, Matthew Christopher Hulbert joins host Sean Rost to discuss his new book, Oracle of Lost Causes: John Newman Edwards and His Never-Ending Civil War.

Episode Image: John Newman Edwards, date unknown [Nancy Ehrlich Collection (P0013), SHSMO]

About the Guest: Matthew Christopher Hulbert is an Elliott Associate Professor of History at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. He is the author of The Ghosts of Guerrilla Memory: How Civil War Bushwhackers became Gunslingers in the American West, winner of the 2017 Wiley-Silver Book Prize, and coeditor of Writing History with Lightning: Cinematic Representations of Nineteenth-Century America.

In this episode, Susan Croce Kelly returns to discuss her new book, Newspaperwoman of the Ozarks: The Life and Times of Lucile Morris Upton.

To listen to Susan's previous appearance on Our Missouri, check out Episode 21.

Episode Image: Woman using a typewriter, date unknown [Arthur Witman Photograph Collection (S0717), SHSMO]

About the Guest: Susan Croce Kelly serves as managing editor of OzarksWatch Magazine. She is the author of several books, including Route 66: The Highway and Its People, Father of Route 66: The Story of Cy Avery, and Newspaperwoman of the Ozarks: The Life and Times of Lucile Morris Upton.

In this episode, host Sean Rost is joined by SHSMO colleagues Kathleen Seale and John Brenner to discuss their memories of the late John Bradbury (1952-2023) as well as his recent book "'My Own Commander': The Civil War Journal of J. J. Sitton, 1863-1865." 

To listen to John Bradbury's earlier appearance on the podcast, please check out Episode 24.

Episode Image: Cover of “‘My Own Commander’: The Civil War Journal of J. J. Sitton, 1863-1865”

About the Guests:

Kathleen Seale holds a master's degree in history from Oklahoma State University. A native of the Missouri Ozarks, she worked at the State Historical Society's Springfield Research Center before being appointed as a Senior Archivist at the Rolla Research Center. Presently, she is the coordinator for SHSMO's Rolla and Springfield research centers.

John Brenner is a native of Columbia, Missouri, and a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis. After beginning his career as a journalist, he entered scholarly publishing in 1994, serving for 18 years as an editor at the University of Missouri Press. A longtime member of SHSMO before joining its staff in 2012, he became managing editor in 2014.

To kick off the "On the Bookshelf" series, Joseph Beilein, Jr. returns to talk about his new book, A Man by Any Other Name: William Clark Quantrill and the Search for American Manhood.

Episode Image: Quantrill’s Raiders Reunion, ca. 1920 [B. James George Sr. Photograph Collection (P0010), SHSMO]

About the Guest: Joseph M. Beilein Jr. holds a PhD in History from the University of Missouri. Presently, he serves as an associate professor of history at Penn State-Erie, The Behrend College. He is the author of Bushwhackers: Guerilla Warfare, Manhood, and the Household in Civil War Missouri, the editor of William Gregg's Civil War: The Battle to Shape the History of Guerrilla Warfare and the co-editor of The Civil War Guerrilla: Unfolding the Black Flag in History, Memory, and Myth. His new book, A Man by Any Other Name: William Clark Quantrill and the Search for American Manhood, is published by the University of Georgia Press.

In this episode, host Sean Rost concludes the Historic Missourians series with a focus on philanthropists and conservationists Edward "Ted" Jones and Hilda "Pat" Jones. 

Episode Image: Ted and Pat Jones at their home in Williamsburg, Missouri, date unknown [Courtesy of the Missouri Department of Conservation]

In this episode, SHSMO senior archivist Elizabeth Engel joins host Sean Rost to discuss her recent Historic Missourians biography of artists and conservationists Charles and Elizabeth Schwartz.

Episode Image: Charles and Elizabeth Schwartz with Canadian geese, undated. [Charles and Elizabeth Schwartz Papers (C2217), SHSMO]

About the Guest: Elizabeth Engel, an Iowa native and a University of Iowa graduate, holds a master's degree in library and information science. Her undergraduate work was in English at Iowa State University. She has been with the State Historical Society of Missouri since 2006 and is currently a senior archivist.

In this episode, SHSMO archivist Hali Allen joins host Sean Rost to discuss her new Historic Missourians biography on the "Orator of the Ozarks," Dewey Short.

A video of Dewey Short's appearance on the Ozark Jubilee referenced in this episode can be found here.

Episode Image: Dewey Short giving a speech, ca. 1950s. [Dewey Short Papers (C4515), SHSMO]

About the Guest: Hali Allen holds a bachelor's degree in history from Pittsburg State University and a master's degree in library and information science from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Presently, she is an archivist for the State Historical Society of Missouri.

In this episode, SHSMO archivist Haley Frizzle Green joins host Sean Rost to discuss her upcoming Historic Missourians biography of Ralph Foster, and the traveling exhibit "Broadcasting the Ozarks: A History of RadiOzark Enterprises," which is on display at the Center for Missouri Studies in Columbia until December 2023.

Episode Image: Ralph Foster, no date [Image courtesy of the Ralph Foster Museum]

About the Guest: Haley Frizzle-Green holds a master's degree in library and information science from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Presently, she is an archivist for the State Historical Society of Missouri at the Springfield Research Center.