George Husmann. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Men in Agriculture Portraits Collection, P1201-011356]

George Husmann was born on November 4, 1827, in Meyenburg, Prussia, the son of J. H. Martin…

Francis White Cloud. Portrait by George Catlin, circa 1844–1845. [Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art]

The Ioways did not live in what is now Missouri for much of the historical era.…

Herman Jaeger. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Southwest Missouri Region Photograph Collection, P1110]

Herman Jaeger was born in Brugg, Switzerland, on March 23, 1844, the sixth of seven…

Lonnie Johnson performing in 1965 at the Folk Festival Show, Palisades Amusement Park, New Jersey. [Cornell University Library, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Amsterdam News Photograph Archive, #8084]

Alonzo “Lonnie” Johnson was an extraordinarily gifted blues guitarist and talented singer…

Jolly Mill circa 2022. [Photo by Ross Brown]

Jolly Mill, a grist mill and whiskey distillery, was built in the late 1840s on…

Scott Joplin. [New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, 1692841]

Known during his lifetime as the “King of Ragtime Writers,” Scott Joplin was an African…

William T. Kemper in 1902. [Political History of Jackson County: Biographical Sketches of the Men Who Have Helped to Make It (1902)]

Progenitor of two of Missouri’s most prominent banking families, William T. Kemper also…

Nathaniel N. Kinney. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Rolla Research Center, William L. Vandeventer Papers (R1428)]

Nathaniel “Nat” N. Kinney has a popular image as a romantic, violent, swashbuckling…

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…

The Figure 8 roller coaster at Lakeside Park, added in 1907, was a “huge reversing spiral” in which cars rushed down a half-mile curving track with “three figure eights in a descent of 50 feet.” [Courtesy of the Joplin Historical & Mineral Museum]

 “Once the most important and popular play place of the Tri-State district,” Lakeside Park…