the State Historical Society of Missouri
![French artist Louis-Leopold Boilly’s rendering of members of an Osage traveling party in Europe, including Big Soldier (at right). [Smithsonian Institution, National Portrait Gallery, object # S/NPG.2011.5]](/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2020-07/Big-Soldier.jpg?itok=HPI9QCbX "French artist Louis-Leopold Boilly’s rendering of members of an Osage traveling party in Europe, including Big Soldier (at right). [Smithsonian Institution, National Portrait Gallery, object # S/NPG.2011.5]")
Big Soldier, a Little Osage war leader, was probably born in 1773 in a village near the…
Writer, suffragist, national Democratic Party political leader, and feminist, Emily Newell Blair was born in Joplin…
![Lilburn Boggs. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, N11644]](/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2020-06/Lilburn-Boggs-Portrait.jpg?itok=UuUuc_L_ "Lilburn Boggs. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, N11644]")
Born in Lexington, Kentucky, on December 14, 1792, Lilburn W. Boggs became one of the most…
![Portrait of William Clark by Charles Willson Peale, c. 1807–1809. [Courtesy of the Independence National Historical Park]](/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2020-06/William-Clark-portrait-by-Peale.jpg?itok=0Eite8jK "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 …
Perl D. Decker was an attorney who served three terms from 1913 to 1919 as a US congressman from Jasper County,…
Born on July 9, 1808, in Mason County, Kentucky, Alexander William Doniphan was the son of…
![William Henry Hatch. [University Archives, University of Missouri, collection C:3/25/28]](/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2020-06/William-Henry-Hatch_0.jpg?itok=ZHqTFZio "William Henry Hatch. [University Archives, University of Missouri, collection C:3/25/28]")
Born near Georgetown, Kentucky, on September 11, 1833, to Quaker parents the Reverend…
![Edward Hempstead. [Louis Houck, A History of Missouri from the Earliest Explorations and Settlements until the Admission of the State into the Union, vol. 3 (Chicago: R. R. Donnelley & Sons, 1908), p. 2]](/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2020-07/Edward-Hempstead.jpg?itok=OQ2N2erA "Edward Hempstead. [Louis Houck, A History of Missouri from the Earliest Explorations and Settlements until the Admission of the State into the Union, vol. 3 (Chicago: R. R. Donnelley & Sons, 1908), p. 2]")
Edward Hempstead, a prominent early Missouri attorney and politician, was born in New…
In 1824–1825, the Marquis de Lafayette, famous veteran of the Revolutionary War, returned to America to make a…
The Louisiana Purchase, an 1803 land deal between the United States and France, doubled the size of the United…