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Father Augustus Tolton, recognized as the first openly African American priest in the United States, was born into slavery in the small community of Brush Creek in Ralls County, Missouri.

Two convoys of army trucks left St. Louis and Kansas City on September 27, 1920.

John Breckenridge Ellis wrote more than twenty-five books during his long life. At eighteen months, he contracted spinal meningitis, which left him without the use of his legs.

Robert P. W. Boatright, hailed as the “dean of confidence men” by scholar David Maurer, was born in 1859 in Franklin County, Missouri.

The Sac and Fox were not native to Missouri, but were significant in Missouri’s territorial and early statehood periods. Unfortunately, much of that interaction was tumultuous.

Peter Humphries Clark provided leadership for African American communities in St. Louis and Cincinnati, Ohio. One biographer titled an article “In His Veins Coursed No Bootlicking Blood,” and that line summarized Clark’s personality.

Elizabeth Seifert published her first book in 1938 when she was forty-one years old.

Fran Landesman launched her career as a jazz lyricist in St. Louis in the 1950s. A native New Yorker, she was married to St. Louisan Jay Landesman.