Rachel Franklin Weekley is a historian with the National Park Service.

Articles Authored

1. This watercolor portrait of Henry Dodge was painted by George Catlin during the Dodge-Leavenworth Expedition of 1834. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, 1962-192-0001]

Henry Dodge served his nation in a long and prosperous life on the nineteenth-century…

This depiction of colonial Ste. Genevieve by artist Oscar Berninghaus is among the murals in the Missouri State Capitol. [State Historical Society of Missouri, color transparency in Ralph Walker Photographs Collection, P0108-017298-1]

The French Revolution induced many royalists to emigrate to the Louisiana Territory in the…

Alexander Majors. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Kansas City Research Center]

Those familiar with the Pony Express recognize Russell, Majors, and Waddell as the…

Missouri Encyclopedia logo

Known as “the pioneer of St. Charles,” François Saucier was born in 1740 in…

William Bradford Waddell. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Waddell Smith Photograph Collection, P0727]

William Bradford Waddell typified the mid-nineteenth-century entrepreneur who shaped the…