Our Missouri

Summer Series 2024: Strangest of All (Missouri Mysteries, Part 1)

If you are an avid listener of Our Missouri, you know that each summer we set aside four episodes for a special summer series. This summer we are headed outdoors to sit around a campfire…albeit virtually…and tell stories with special ghost hosts, Kathleen Seale and Haley Frizzle-Green, for our summer series on…Missouri Mysteries. Haley opens up the summer series with the story of Frank Edwards and the Strangest of All.

For more information on RadiOzark and Strangest of All please visit: https://collections.shsmo.org/manuscripts/springfield/sp0071

Episode Image: Record of “Strangest of All,” date unknown [Radiozark Record Collection (SP0071), SHSMO]

About the Guests:

Katie Seale holds a master's degree in history from Oklahoma State University. A native of the Missouri Ozarks, she worked at the State Historical Society's Springfield Research Center before becoming the coordinator for the Society’s Rolla and Springfield research centers.

Haley Frizzle-Green holds a master's degree in library and information science from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Presently, she is an archivist for the State Historical Society of Missouri at the Springfield Research Center.

Episode 99: Sudden Deaths in St. Louis - Sarah Lirley (On the Bookshelf, Part 9)

To conclude the On the Bookshelf series, host Sean Rost talks with Sarah Lirley about her new book, "Sudden Deaths in St. Louis: Coroner Bias in the Gilded Age."

Episode Image: James A. Love standing beside the grave of his first wife Ann George and child in Fulton, Missouri, 1888 [James A. Love Papers (C0131), SHSMO]

About the Guest: Sarah Lirley is an associate professor of history at Columbia College. She holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She previously served as a Center for Missouri Studies Fellow. She is the author of "Sudden Deaths in St. Louis: Coroner Bias in the Gilded Age."

Episode 98: Broadcasting the Ozarks - Kitty Ledbetter (On the Bookshelf, Part 8)

This episode features a conversation with Kitty Ledbetter about her new book, "Broadcasting the Ozarks: Si Siman and Country Music at the Crossroads."

Episode Image: May Kennedy McCord sitting on a porch with a guitar, ca. 1930s [Vance Randolph Ozark Folksongs Collection (C3774), SHSMO]

About the Guest: Kitty Ledbetter is professor emerita of English at Texas State University. She formerly served as editor of the Journal of Texas Music History. She is the author of "Broadcasting the Ozarks: Si Siman and Country Music at the Crossroads."

Episode 97: Men of No Reputation - Kimberly Harper (On the Bookshelf, Part 7)

This episode features a conversation with Kimberly Harper about her new book, "Men of No Reputation: Robert Boatright, the Buckfoot Gang, and the Fleecing of Middle America."

Episode Image: Main Street in Joplin, Missouri, ca. 1902-1906 [Kay Kirkman and Roger Stinnett Photograph Collection (P0178), SHSMO]

About the Guest: Kimberly Harper holds a master's degree from the University of Arkansas. Presently, she is the editor for the Missouri Historical Review. She is the author of "White Man's Heaven: The Lynching and Expulsion of Blacks in the Southern Ozarks, 1894-1909" and "Men of No Reputation: Robert Boatright, the Buckfoot Gang, and the Fleecing of Middle America."

Episode 96: Ozark Voices - Alex Primm (On the Bookshelf, Part 6)

This episode features a conversation with Alex Primm about his new book, “Ozark Voices: Oral Histories from the Heartland,” and his 40+ year career alongside the rivers, gravel bars, forests, and people of the Missouri Ozarks.

Episode Image: Agent Tom Wright at the Lake of the Ozarks, 1953 [Missouri Ruralist Photographs (P0030), SHSMO]

About the Guest: Alex Primm has been a freelance oral historian since the 1980s. He has worked on projects in the Ozarks for the U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Forest Service, and the United States Army. His book, “Ozark Voices: Oral Histories from the Heartland,” was published by McFarland.

Episode 95: Fighting for a Free Missouri - Sydney J. Norton (On the Bookshelf, Part 5)

If you missed her keynote address at the 66th Missouri Conference on History, don't worry, because Sydney J. Norton joined host Sean Rost to discuss her new book, Fighting for a Free Missouri: German Immigrants, African Americans, and the Issue of Slavery.

Episode Image: Arnold Krekel, date unknown [Mit Feder Und Hammer: The German Experience in St. Louis Collection (S0941), SHSMO]

About the Guest:

Sydney J. Norton is an independent scholar, translator, and educator in St. Louis. While teaching German at Saint Louis University, she curated "German Immigrant Abolitionists: Fighting for a Free Missouri," an exhibition that opened at the Center for Global Citizenship, and that traveled to the Deutschheim State Historic Site in Hermann. Her research for this project and her close collaboration with colleagues in related fields inspired her recently published collection of essays: Fighting for a Free Missouri: German Immigrants, African Americans, and the Issue of Slavery. Norton earned her doctorate in German literature and cultural studies from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Her publications include books and articles on contemporary German art and literature. Weimar-era performing and visual arts, and the German abolitionist movement in the United States. Norton currently teaches German at St. Louis Community College, Forest Park, and the German School Association of St. Louis. She is on the library staff at Concordia Historical Institute. 

Episode 94: Oracle of Lost Causes - Matthew Christopher Hulbert (On the Bookshelf, Part 4)

In this episode, Matthew Christopher Hulbert joins host Sean Rost to discuss his new book, Oracle of Lost Causes: John Newman Edwards and His Never-Ending Civil War.

Episode Image: John Newman Edwards, date unknown [Nancy Ehrlich Collection (P0013), SHSMO]

About the Guest: Matthew Christopher Hulbert is an Elliott Associate Professor of History at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. He is the author of The Ghosts of Guerrilla Memory: How Civil War Bushwhackers became Gunslingers in the American West, winner of the 2017 Wiley-Silver Book Prize, and coeditor of Writing History with Lightning: Cinematic Representations of Nineteenth-Century America.

Episode 93: Newspaperwoman of the Ozarks - Susan Croce Kelly (On the Bookshelf, Part 3)

In this episode, Susan Croce Kelly returns to discuss her new book, Newspaperwoman of the Ozarks: The Life and Times of Lucile Morris Upton.

To listen to Susan's previous appearance on Our Missouri, check out Episode 21.

Episode Image: Woman using a typewriter, date unknown [Arthur Witman Photograph Collection (S0717), SHSMO]

About the Guest: Susan Croce Kelly serves as managing editor of OzarksWatch Magazine. She is the author of several books, including Route 66: The Highway and Its People, Father of Route 66: The Story of Cy Avery, and Newspaperwoman of the Ozarks: The Life and Times of Lucile Morris Upton.

Episode 92: John Bradbury & "My Own Commander" - Katie Seale/John Brenner (On the Bookshelf, Part 2)

In this episode, host Sean Rost is joined by SHSMO colleagues Kathleen Seale and John Brenner to discuss their memories of the late John Bradbury (1952-2023) as well as his recent book "'My Own Commander': The Civil War Journal of J. J. Sitton, 1863-1865." 

To listen to John Bradbury's earlier appearance on the podcast, please check out Episode 24.

Episode Image: Cover of “‘My Own Commander’: The Civil War Journal of J. J. Sitton, 1863-1865”

About the Guests:

Kathleen Seale holds a master's degree in history from Oklahoma State University. A native of the Missouri Ozarks, she worked at the State Historical Society's Springfield Research Center before being appointed as a Senior Archivist at the Rolla Research Center. Presently, she is the coordinator for SHSMO's Rolla and Springfield research centers.

John Brenner is a native of Columbia, Missouri, and a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis. After beginning his career as a journalist, he entered scholarly publishing in 1994, serving for 18 years as an editor at the University of Missouri Press. A longtime member of SHSMO before joining its staff in 2012, he became managing editor in 2014.

Episode 91: A Man by Any Other Name - Joseph Beilein, Jr. (On the Bookshelf, Part 1)

To kick off the "On the Bookshelf" series, Joseph Beilein, Jr. returns to talk about his new book, A Man by Any Other Name: William Clark Quantrill and the Search for American Manhood.

Episode Image: Quantrill’s Raiders Reunion, ca. 1920 [B. James George Sr. Photograph Collection (P0010), SHSMO]

About the Guest: Joseph M. Beilein Jr. holds a PhD in History from the University of Missouri. Presently, he serves as an associate professor of history at Penn State-Erie, The Behrend College. He is the author of Bushwhackers: Guerilla Warfare, Manhood, and the Household in Civil War Missouri, the editor of William Gregg's Civil War: The Battle to Shape the History of Guerrilla Warfare and the co-editor of The Civil War Guerrilla: Unfolding the Black Flag in History, Memory, and Myth. His new book, A Man by Any Other Name: William Clark Quantrill and the Search for American Manhood, is published by the University of Georgia Press.