Robert Campbell. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, N38642]

Robert Campbell’s lengthy life bridged the transition from fur trade to modern capitalistic…

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…

William C. Carr. Portrait by George Caleb Bingham. [Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, 1970.156]

William C. Carr, one of the first attorneys to practice law in Missouri, was born in…

George Catlin posed for this portrait by English landscape artist William Fisk in 1849. [National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, NPG.70.14]

George Catlin was among the earliest Euro-American artists to paint the Indigenous peoples…

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Celia, the property of Robert Newsom, stood trial in Fulton, Missouri, in 1855 for the murder of her master, a…

Jean Pierre Chouteau Sr. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, N22207]

Jean Pierre Chouteau, known as Pierre, was a pioneer settler in St. Louis and the territory that was to…

Pierre Chouteau Jr. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, 1922-024-0001]

Pierre Chouteau Jr., scion of the powerful early St. Louis family and the most influential…

Cyprian Clamorgan’s The Colored Aristocracy of St. Louis. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, MHS Library, Lib197-00001]

The grandson of Jacques Clamorgan, Cyprian Clamorgan wrote The Colored Aristocracy of St.…

Portrait of William Clark by Charles Willson Peale, c. 1807–1809. [Courtesy of the Independence National Historical Park]

William Clark, the celebrated explorer who joined Meriwether Lewis in leading an overland…

John F. Darby. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Prints and Photographs Division, N12110]

John Darby was a highly accomplished and distinguished lawyer, banker, philanthropist, and…