One of the first American settlements in the Ste. Genevieve District was at a cluster of land grants on the west side of Rivere Grande, or Big River, in present-day St. Francois County.
Few people realize that the family of James, or Jim, Bowie, who made the Bowie Knife famous and later died at The Alamo, spent time in Southeast Missouri at the beginning of the 19th Century.
Samuel Scism’s story is a common one among Civil War soldiers who survived prison camps. Vegetables in their diets might have prevented many cases of chronic dysentery. The state of medical care of the time meant that the malady was untreatable and subject to recurrence.
A traveler from southeastern New York, Christian Schultz, descended the Ohio River in 1807. He stopped at the mouth of the Ohio River on the Missouri side on October 24, 1807, and noticed a strange phenomenon.
Heavy rains fell in late spring and early summer of 1814 in the eastern part of Missouri Territory.
4 min
About Tales from Days Gone By
From the publisher's feed
Behind the big themes, celebrated figures, and dry dates of history are the interesting stories of life in the past and ordinary people. Southeast Missouri has a varied and rich history that you often…
don’t hear about in history classes. Join Bill Eddleman of the State Historical Society of Missouri to hear about these stories with “Tales from Days Gone By.”