the State Historical Society of Missouri
![The Administration Building at the Missouri State Penitentiary, 1955. Missouri carried out executions at the penitentiary’s gas chamber from 1937 until switching to lethal injection in 1989 and moving its death row to the Potosi Correctional Center in Washington County. [Missouri State Archives/Missouri Digital Heritage, Mark Schreiber Collection, MS297_255_009]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2024-06/1.-capital-punishment-in-missouri.jpg?h=436a5d0a&itok=-rpMGoZ7 "The Administration Building at the Missouri State Penitentiary, 1955. Missouri carried out executions at the penitentiary’s gas chamber from 1937 until switching to lethal injection in 1989 and moving its death row to the Potosi Correctional Center in Washington County. [Missouri State Archives/Missouri Digital Heritage, Mark Schreiber Collection, MS297_255_009]")
With the exception of two years in the early twentieth century, the state of Missouri has always allowed the…
Born on July 9, 1808, in Mason County, Kentucky, Alexander William Doniphan was the son of…
![Lloyd Gaines. [University of Missouri School of Law, Lloyd Gaines Collection]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2021-09/1-Lloyd-Gaines.jpg?h=416ef11d&itok=iYyUVG7t "Lloyd Gaines. [University of Missouri School of Law, Lloyd Gaines Collection]")
Lloyd Gaines’s efforts to obtain a legal education in Missouri resulted in a Supreme Court…
![Henry S. Geyer. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Prints and Photographs Collection, P0004-002099]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2022-03/1.%20Henry%20S.%20Geyer.jpg?h=0152cff4&itok=dDPS5Fld "Henry S. Geyer. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Prints and Photographs Collection, P0004-002099]")
Henry S. Geyer was born in Frederick, Maryland, on December 9, 1790. He received a private…
![John Rice Jones. [Columbia Missouri Herald: Twenty-Fifth Anniversary, 1895]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2024-06/1.-john-rice-jones.jpg?h=6234be0d&itok=zgUYOJ_3 "John Rice Jones. [Columbia Missouri Herald: Twenty-Fifth Anniversary, 1895]")
John Rice Jones, a pioneering jurist renowned for his erudition, was one of the principal framers of Missouri…
![Arnold Krekel. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Mit Feder und Hammer! The German Experience in St. Louis Records, S0941-079]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2023-04/1.%20Arnold%20Krekel.jpg?h=2f801a8e&itok=kE7sGgUx "Arnold Krekel. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Mit Feder und Hammer! The German Experience in St. Louis Records, S0941-079]")
Arnold Krekel, who served from 1865 to 1888 as a US judge for the Western District of…
Abiel Leonard, a lawyer, jurist, and political leader, was born in Windsor, Vermont, on May…
![John B. C. Lucas. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, N29998]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2021-09/1-John_BC_Lucas.jpg?h=9a44d118&itok=IIIW0a5- "John B. C. Lucas. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, N29998]")
When John B. C. Lucas died in St. Louis in 1842 at the age of eighty-four, his obituary…
![Virginia Minor. [Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-95372]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2021-03/1-Minor-v-Happersett.jpg?h=f72d155d&itok=2Ui1rElZ "Virginia Minor. [Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-95372]")
Decided in 1873 by the Supreme Court of Missouri and in 1874 by the US Supreme Court, …