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…

Anna Clapp portrait

Anna Lansing Clapp, president of the Ladies’ Union Aid Society (LUAS) of St. Louis, was born on August 28, 1814, at…

Adaline Couzins portrait

Adaline Weston Couzins, a volunteer nursing escort and relief worker during the Civil War, was born in Brighton,…

Phoebe Couzins portrait

Phoebe Wilson Couzins, a lawyer and suffragist, was born on September 8, 1842, to John Edward Decker and…

Samuel Ryan Curtis. [State Historical Society of Missouri, James C. Joplin Photograph Collection, P0850-20239]

Samuel Ryan Curtis figured largely in Missouri’s Civil War history from August 1861 through…

A portrait of Alexander Doniphan, painted by George Caleb Bingham around 1850

Born on July 9, 1808, in Mason County, Kentucky, Alexander William Doniphan was the son of…

James Eads. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, P0004-1016]

Born in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, on May 23, 1820, James Buchanan Eads became an engineer of…

John Wesley Emerson, circa 1880. Photograph by John A. Scholten. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, P0233-2542]

John Emerson, a lawyer in Ironton, Missouri, became a small-town Victorian gentleman who…

Daniel Marsh Frost

Daniel Marsh Frost, a Confederate army officer, was born on August 9, 1823, in Mariaville,…

Carte-de-viste of Hamilton Rowan Gamble. [US National Park Service, Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield, WICR 11505]

Born on November 29, 1798, Hamilton R. Gamble was the youngest son of Joseph and Anne…