At the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center in Jackson, we never know who will walk through the door with an intriguing document or item — and in this case, it was Doris Dace, a friend who is on the board at Old McKendree Church in Jackson and is generally very knowledgeable about local history. On this particular Monday, Doris brought us a small, lightweight wooden box, kidney shaped, roughly 6 by 3 inches, with a small drawer. “Cape Girardeau MO” was drawn across the top, with a sketch of three yellow roses in the middle. Then, Doris showed me, under the drawer was an inscription reading “From Noah to Cassa, 9-1-41.”

Nothing strikes dread into the heart of a historian like the question “What do I do with these unidentified photographs?”, because the answer is generally “Make your best guess and keep the ones you have an idea about, ask your older relatives if they know anything, but there generally isn’t an easy way to figure it out.” Telling that to a person who is usually grieving the loss of a loved one, bringing home to them that they haven’t just lost a loved one, they’ve also lost untold stories and so much family history -- it’s not my favorite, and it happens with depressing regularity.

One of my favorite aspects of my job as director of the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center in Jackson is what I call the “show and tell” of it. So often, we’ll get a phone call or visit from someone who found “some neat old thing”, and they want us to see it. We love this. We can’t always take it as a donation, but we can usually suggest a more appropriate facility for it.

It happened the same way it always does. I was in the County Commission Minutes index book at the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center in Jackson, researching a simple question -- when was the Cape Special Road District formed? -- and stumbled into a whole other story that ties in beautifully to some current events. ...

Too often, Black history is thought of as something to be celebrated only in February, with Martin Luther King Jr.'s rousing speech rightly at the forefront. The Civil Rights movement and slavery are far from the entire story, though. February is Black History Month, and that means celebrating all of Black history and how it is part of the fabric of all of our shared history, so I thought I would highlight a particular volume in the Cape Girardeau County Genealogical Society's library at the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center.. ...

If you know about the Work Projects Administration, or WPA, you likely know it was part of the New Deal, President Franklin Roosevelt's program to get Americans working again in the wake of the Great Depression. The WPA is probably most strongly associated with public building projects all over the country, including Jackson's Post Building (formerly the city's post office) and Cape Girardeau's Lorimier School, now in transition to become the Kellerman Foundation's museum, but the WPA also employed people to help with document conservation projects. ...

Our journey begins on a rainy October morning at the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center in Jackson. The usual road noise is absent because Highway 61 is closed for construction in front of the building. Two new volunteers are working on a project to create an updated finding aid for the county's inquests, pre-1940. ...

"Have you ever seen a federal patent?" the Jackson Heritage Association's collection archivist, Cathi Stoverink, asked me that very question earlier this week, and I had to admit I had not, so she handed me a folio containing United States patents in the name of Cramer W. LaPierre, who was born in Jackson on March 31, 1904, to Mazuret and Margaret Struthers LaPierre...

Not so long ago, microfilm was the standard for capturing information that might otherwise be lost. Newspapers, court documents, crumbling deeds and more from those who settled the region and built it up, all are represented on roll after roll of microfilm in repositories all over the world. ...

At the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center, we are forever in the process of updating each index to make our files more accessible, or to better comply with the law. Such is the case with an index of Justice of the Peace criminal cases. It named victims of sexual assault and, by Missouri law, that's no longer allowed, so archives assistant Tiffany Fleming has been working to redact victim names...

At the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center, we are on a (probably never-ending) quest to reorganize the stacks. As a result, I'm running across all kinds of bits and pieces of the county's history, in interesting locations. This, for example, is a membership roll of the Cape Girardeau County Anti-Horsethief Association, written onto the back few pages of the circuit court clerk's fee book from the era...

At the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center, I have learned to listen when archives assistant Tiffany Fleming asks "What's that?" The "that" in this case was a pile of books I had walked past hundreds of times and never thought twice about, small books without many distinguishing marks on the covers. One, long and skinny with a dark green marbled cover, turned out to be a receipt book for dog licenses issued in Jackson in the 1890s...

At the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center, one of the many collections we keep is tax records -- monstrous books, oversized and heavy, that list personal property or real-estate taxes paid by Cape Girardeau County property owners in a given year, going back to the mid-1800s. Many of the tax books are a post-and-board structure, meaning metal posts bind the pages between two covers, or boards. Creative naming, right?...

When an acquaintance of mine told me that a headstone in Memorial Park Cemetery in Cape Girardeau County bore a carrot cake recipe, I was both delighted and curious -- was this an "over my dead body" situation, or a "share it with the world"? Cemeteries are a favorite of mine, as they're peaceful places to memorialize and put monuments to those who have gone before us. ...

Several months ago, I came across a small box on a shelf -- not such an unusual occurrence, here at the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center, but what was inside, was. I found several title abstracts, or a document detailing a land parcel's ownership chain. Most of these dated back to the beginning of kept records, so, late 1700s, early 1800s, with typewritten transcriptions of wills and deeds, plat maps and other odd bits of information...

Winter is a quieter time at the Archive Center. The phone is ringing less often, emails flow a little more slowly, and the summer genealogy tourists have hung up their keys for a few months while they meditate on what they've found so far. Staff and volunteers are making inroads on ongoing projects, and year-end administrative duties are wrapping up. All in all, it's a good time for planning and for answering questions...

The phone rings at the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center. It's a Tuesday afternoon. I answer, seeing "Wireless Caller" on the ID screen, as usual, and not knowing any more than that. This time, it's a bereaved person whose loved one collected documents, and they've come across a box of papers they have no earthly idea what to do with. ...

Nearly 300 known cemeteries exist within Cape Girardeau County's borders, outside of Cape Girardeau and Jackson city limits, and in addition to honoring the dead who helped settle and build this county, they are rich with history and tradition. At the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center in Jackson, about a decade ago, several staff and volunteers here took equipment, maps and rough descriptions from various sources and hiked into the wilds to find, catalog and clean up some of these cemeteries. ...

It's never too late or too much to get started with your family history. At the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center, we help patrons with this all the time, and here are some considerations. What do you know? Jot down details you can remember, and find the gaps so you can ask questions of people that might know. ...

Cape Girardeau County has its share of ghost towns -- unincorporated communities where few if any residents dwell. One such town is Houk -- not Houck -- where highways F and Z meet, south of Tilsit, west of Gordonville. The town is Solado on a map at the county's Recorder of Deeds office, and at least one person I asked called it Bugtown or Bucktown...

Although I've lived in Cape Girardeau County most of my life, I don't have a long family history here. Mom's family lived in Bollinger County until 1950, and Dad's family -- his dad was from a long line in Scott County and his mother was from South Dakota. I thought my search there might be useful for any of you who, like me, have family from ... not here...

In April 1875, Alpheus C. "A.C." Stevenson set out from northern Cape Girardeau County on a trip that would take him and his wagon party through Missouri to Kansas. Fortunately for us, he wrote about it, and one of his descendants decided to retrace it...

If you missed part 1 of this column in March, let me fill you in. Archives assistant Lyle Johnston likes to regale me with prices and descriptions of items sold at auction through the county's history, as he archives (mends, sorts, cleans) files from the county's probate court. ...

Blame this one on Lyle Johnston, archives assistant. One of Lyle's ongoing projects is to archive (that is, clean, sort, mend) papers in files from the probate court of Cape Girardeau County. These files range from the early 1800s to nearly the present day, and they contain some gems. Lyle likes to call those out to me as I'm working on administrative tasks in my office next to his work area, and we've been compiling these for the better part of a year...

At the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center, we are resource people in two main categories: county government and court documents, and context for researchers. We house many records for only Cape Girardeau County government offices and circuit court cases, and we house the libraries for the Cape Girardeau County Genealogical Society and the Jackson Heritage Association...

It's 1839. A clerk of the probate court is halfway through his day. It's July, so the heat is bearing down on him. No electricity, no fans, no air conditioning. His window is open. He's riffling through sheaves of paper related to a particular case, and some of those pages are especially related to each other, but the information won't all fit on a single sheet. What is he to do?...

For as prominent as cemeteries are, the rules around them can be tough to find. Here at the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center in Jackson, we hear from a lot of people who want to know more, and we love this. The county is rich in (rife with) cemeteries. ...

Here at the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center in Jackson, assistant archivist Lyle Johnston often regales me with examples of atrocious spelling and cheap prices in files from the county's probate court, in the 1800s. Most of these are on the inventory and valuation taken for the deceased's estate auction, where "chizzles" and a "fawling leaf table" went for such staggeringly low prices that it's a wonder there were any proceeds to speak of. ...

Sometimes, finding a ledger at the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center leads to more questions than answers. When a researcher asked me about the ledger for the Cape County Poor Farm, or Home for the Friendless, that held true. I hadn't known much about the poor farm before, just that as many counties in the 1900s did, Cape County had one. It was more or less where Cape County Park is now, for about 70 years, until 1956. After a series of other uses, the park was established in the 1970s...

Delta in southern Cape Girardeau County has a fascinating history, beginning long before its incorporation. Settlers first came to the swampy land in the 1880s. Some were loggers, others fur trappers and hunters. The logging industry and railroads gave Delta its start, according to the Southeast Missourian archives. By 1887, three railroad companies -- Cotton Belt, Iron Mountain and Houck Railroad -- went through the depot at Delta...

In an 1891 court case, Robert T. Giboney testified that he had filed a claim with German Insurance Co. of New York for fire damage to his farming equipment and stacks of hay. He asked for $300 plus 10% damages, and that previous receipts be canceled. ...

June Seabaugh, former teacher and onetime columnist for the Southeast Missourian, is also a missionary who took her travel hiatus brought on by COVID-19 to write a book about her experiences. In "Adventures of a Missionary Grandma," Seabaugh describes the journey God took her on, which took her to unfamiliar lands where she didn't speak the language or practice the religion, but she still saw miracles and learned more than she'd ever expected to...

Infertility. Homelessness. Miscarriage. Domestic violence. Cancer. Police violence. Tonight, survivors of each of these harrowing experiences will speak on their experience, and emerging from it. Last week, the Southeast Missourian published a wrap. Previously, this October wrap was dedicated to survivors of breast cancer, to help raise awareness. This year, said project and event manager for rustmedia Jamie Phillips, the focus shifted to those whose stories were also about perseverance...

Where domesticity meets art, Nadine Saylor's work thrives. Saylor is a glass artist and professor based in Southern Illinois, and she's been in Jackson before — with her students from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, she held a mobile blown-glass studio demonstration in Uptown Jackson back in February, with an exhibition at the Cape Girardeau County History Center at 102 S. High Street in Jackson...

Old Town Cape executive director Liz Haynes said the key word for 2020 is innovate. That's exactly what organizers for the annual Old Town Cape fundraiser are doing by holding Revivify, a multi-faceted fundraiser to benefit OTC's revitalization efforts in downtown Cape Girardeau, set to happen between 4 and 9 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 22...

From 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. this Friday at the Kellerman Foundation's Flag House, 740 North St. in Cape Girardeau, an open house will feature not one, not two, but three speakers with local ties and military decorations. Max Lederer, publisher of the Stars & Stripes newspaper, which has roots in Bloomfield, Missouri, will attend and present, as will Cape Girardeau native and leading Hollywood director Dale Dye, and Jack Jackson, a highly decorated soldier in Vietnam and former test pilot for Boeing in St. ...

September is National Suicide Awareness Month, and the Cape Girardeau Out of the Darkness Walk for Suicide Prevention this weekend aims to raise both funds and awareness. The event is in its 10th year in 2020, said co-organizer Laura Matlock-Hill. "Normally it's a walk but this year it's not," Matlock-Hill said. "We're calling it the Out of the Darkness Experience."...

Mid-September is a beautiful time to be outdoors in Missouri. The weather's nearly perfect, the light takes on a golden glow that lights up the world at the edges, and there are plenty of opportunities coming up to get out and enjoy it. An event is coming up next weekend that I wanted to highlight this week: The Shawnee Hills pottery trail. Originally, it was planned for May, but it was postponed, and, I'm told, it's being done a little bit differently this year...

Women are helping women in the aptly named "Women Helping Women" online fundraiser to benefit the Safe House for Women in Cape Girardeau. For each of the next 10 weeks, donors can buy a chance to win a prize, drawn and announced each Friday at 3 p.m. on Facebook Live...

It is a weekend for the arts, this weekend. If you're heading to downtown Cape Girardeau or to the River Campus, you'll see the bright lights and artsy glow of First Friday. It's back in a major way this weekend, albeit socially distanced and with required masks, per Cape Girardeau County's emergency mask order...

A not-for-profit agency new to the Cape Girardeau region aims to provide foster children with their own rolling luggage, and it's dear to founder Kay Kizer's heart. Kizer started the foundation on the very last day of 2018, as she put it, "wanting to start the new year off not wasting any of God's time."...

Type 1 diabetes is a potentially devastating condition for people whose pancreas doesn't produce enough insulin to metabolize sugar. T1 means continual blood sugar testing, and if left untreated or mismanaged, side effects can include loss of kidney function, eyesight issues, numbness and tingling in the extremities, even loss of limbs...

One year after a beagle/dachshund mix with a "tail" on his forehead was rescued from the side of a road, Narwhal, the magical unicorn dog, is turning 1-year-old, and Mac's Mission, a special-needs animal rescue based in Cape Girardeau, is throwing a party to celebrate...

Michelle Prichard's son Charley is 10 and a student at Jackson public schools. Diagnosed with autism at age 2, he's been in special education classes all along, and, Prichard said, she saw potential to help. "Given the circumstances of what we're going through today with COVID-19, I knew that the special education teachers would have a more difficult time keeping their students busy and in their own space," she said. ...

Malcolm McCrae wants to bring art to the people, and while his colorful murals dot the Cape Girardeau landscape, he's working on a project now to be more direct with supplies and instructions to people who want and need a creative outlet. Since shutdowns related to COVID-19 began earlier this year, McCrae has been teaching ni virtual classrooms and assisting in online summer camps for organizations across the country, he said. ...

The pandemic increased the need for services provided by Lutheran Family and Children's Services of Missouri, said Susan McDowell, chief programs officer. "From mental health services to parenting education and support, bolstering our communities with the resources they need to navigate these uncertain times is needed now more than ever," she said...

Since 1961, Homecomers and homemade ice cream have gone hand in hand, thanks to a stand run by volunteers of Excelsior Chapter, Order of DeMolay in Jackson. This year, Homecomers has been canceled because of concerns over COVID-19, but, said organizer Rodney Pensel, the ice cream stand will still be serving up orders later this month...

This week's topper comes to you courtesy of rustmedia's James Baughn, whose blog, Pavement Ends (semissourian.com/blogs/pavementends), has a long and rich archive that I personally have lost hours to, looking up points of interest and James' observations. I highly recommend it...

Missouri is set to celebrate its bicentennial in 2021, commemorating the August 1821 entry of the 24th state into the Union. The Missouri Bicentennial Commission is hard at work behind the scenes across the state, and in Scott County, locals are working right along to set the scene right...

Emily Hendricks founded the Invisible Warriors Project to help tell the stories that don't get told when people suffer from illnesses that aren't readily apparent. Hendricks, a Cape Girardeau native who now lives in Austin, Texas, has endured hundreds of medical procedures in connection to VACTERL (it stands for vertebral defects, anal atresia, cardiac defects, tracheo-esophageal fistula, renal anomalies, and limb abnormalities -- people diagnosed with VACTERL association typically have at least three of these characteristic features, according to the National Institutes of Health), is especially aware of the toll of medical trauma, and she said she wanted to help Invisible Warriors tell their stories without having to continually repeat themselves.. ...

Not one, not two, but three Juneteenth celebrations are set for Friday in Cape Girardeau. Juneteenth commemorates the day in 1865 when Union soldiers told enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas, that the Civil War had ended, and they were free...

Movement Mind + Body: In the midst of a pandemic, with businesses and organizations closed, we can still all be outside. That's the concept behind Movement Mind + Body, a weeklong event set for June 20 to 27, which invites participants to get out and get moving -- and take a selfie or two along the way to get entered for prizes from local businesses...

The bravery and sacrifice of hundreds of first responders on Sept. 11, 2001, during and after the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., affected Jackson Fire Rescue captains Sam Herndon and Ryan Davie deeply -- and they're leading a charge to finish a memorial now in progress on the Jackson fire station lawn...

Inspired by the Lift Up Lou project in Louisville, Kentucky, Elevate Cape aims to bring people and projects together who are already working toward a common goal: betterment. "I thought it was a really interesting approach," Downes said of the Kentucky project...

There's an old saw about how everyone is fighting a battle you can't see. It's true. It's especially true now, when literally every person on the planet (probably the scientists on the International Space Station, too) is going through one of the more stressful situations that this group of humanity has seen, all at once...

There is so much to write about this week. I'm shifting gears from writing about how COVID-19 is affecting literally every aspect of everyone's lives, to letting you -- yes you! -- readers know what's actually happening, live and in person, and I could not be happier about it...

Happy Return to Normal Week! Except no, not really. Gov. Mike Parson's shelter in place order expired Monday morning at 12:01 a.m., and local government and businesses are slowly reopening, to get the economy going again while aiming to minimize risk of infection. I hope that's how it goes. I hope people continue to keep our distance from each other, wear our masks, wash our hands...

Themes aren't usually something I can pull off with this column. This week, though, I have one. Southeast Missouri State University has a lot going on, a lot of it virtually, so let's get started. "She iS," an exhibition of international works curated by university student Maria Esswein featuring 25 artists who identify as female, is on display virtually and being hosted by Southeast's Catapult Creative House, at sheiscatapult.online...

Updates! Updates! I have updates! I've been waiting to write that for what feels like forever but has actually been closer to "a little more than a month." I don't know about you, but time has lost all meaning for me. Is it Wednesday as I write this? Is it last week, or October? I'm pretty sure it's spring time, judging by the warmer temperatures and greener leaves. Pretty sure...

The headline here is from an Emily Dickinson poem. She's one of my favorites, and her work has been on my mind a lot lately. You know what else the poem says about hope? It sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all. I'm seeing a lot of that, here lately...

My plan for this week's column was to share a self-guided driving tour of interesting places in Southeast Missouri. I even asked my colleague over in rustmedia, James Baughn, for some help with it, and he was kind enough to oblige. That feels a touch irresponsible, though, in light of the governor's recommendations to stay home, so I'll save that for a future installment. ...

I know this is only the third week of an events column without in-person events, but it feels like it's been forever. Not much has changed for me. Not outwardly, anyway. My work routine is about the same, except it's at a table in my house instead of my desk in the newsroom. I'm still responding to messages, contacting sources, writing up news releases and articles, same as I'd do any other day...

There's so much we can't do right now, it's important to focus on what we can do. A source told me that for an article I wrote last week, and it's been pinging around in my mind ever since. I might not have gotten to see Mick Foley last weekend (he's rescheduled for mid-June), but there were plenty of apples left in the produce section at a local grocery store, so I could make an apple pie, and that was pretty great. ...

Wow. This has been an intense week. I probably don't need to tell you that. I think it's pretty safe to say that everyone is feeling some kind of disruption, thanks to COVID-19. As of the time I'm writing this, we do not have a confirmed case in our readership area, but that doesn't mean store shelves aren't empty and workplaces aren't trying to give work-at-home options where they can. I am thankful to my employer that I'm working from home myself, and my cats are pretty happy about it too...

I pulled a lot of these suggestions from an article on lifehack.com, and added a few of my own. If you're trying to entertain children between their homework assignments, maybe some of these suggestions will come in handy. n Paper airplanes: There's nothing like folding a piece of paper into a dartlike shape and tossing it, watching it arc through the air, and glide to a stop. ...

Tomorrow is Pi Day! Yes, it's the day to celebrate pi, a mathematical figure used to calculate the surface area or diameter of a circle, by eating pie. Any way you slice it, it's a wonderful chance to dig into dessert and enjoy a math lesson. Or just eat pie. Some great events are on tap for this weekend -- and Tuesday's St. Patrick's Day too...

Three Cape Girardeau-based bands will perform live, original music tonight in a show at Shakers Bar in downtown Cape. Isabella, Guy Morgan and The Scatterguns will team up for a downtown throwdown at the bar, 2 N. Main St. in Cape Girardeau. Zach Smith, guitarist for Isabella, said the band's sound is a little bit pop punk with some alternative rock or metal thrown into the mix...

Triskaidekaphobia, or fear of the number 13, has been around for centuries, said Christy Mershon, interim director of the Economic and Business Engagement Center at Southeast Missouri State University. Friday is an unlucky day, too. So why not have a ghost tour or two on Friday the 13th?...

Actor Jay Wade will reprise the role of Omari in the Cincinnati Ensemble Theatre production of "Pipeline" March 11 through April 4, according to a university news release. Wade first performed the role while studying at Southeast Missouri State University, in the Alabama Shakespeare Festival (ASF) production of "Pipeline" in October 2019 in Montgomery, Alabama...

A concert on Southeast Missouri State University's River Campus Saturday afternoon is the grand finale to a daylong celebration of horns, organized by Nick Kenney, professor of applied horn and assistant director of bands at Southeast. Kenney said "Horn Day" will be "a really compact day of a lot of stuff."...

Live reggae music, drinks, food, vendors, positive vibrations -- the fifth annual Bob Marley Day, set to start at 6 p.m. Saturday at The Barn, 731 Broadway in Cape Girardeau, has it all. Organizer and local artist Malcolm McCrae said this year, the festival's format is a little different...

Southeast Missouri State University's Catapult Creative House at 612 Broadway in Cape Girardeau is the place to be this month. "Talkin' Foolish," a solo exhibition of works by Sage Perrott, also known as Haypeep, will be on display today through Feb. 24...

The Children's Art Festival will celebrate its 20th anniversary Friday, Feb. 7, at First Friday, Southeast Missouri Arts Council director Sara Steffens said. "Originally, it was just us partnering with public schools in Cape Girardeau, and it grew throughout our region," Steffens said...

Saturday's fourth annual SoutheastHEALTH Journey Gala, will transport attendees to Paris this year, said SoutheastHEALTH foundation president Patti Ranzini. "Our amazing committee helps us pick the theme, and this year, they came up with a soiree in Paris," Ranzini said, adding that one committee member is making replica Eiffel Towers that will stand 12 feet tall. Cafe scenes and more pieces will contribute to an overall feel of actually being in Paris, she said...

If you've ever settled in for the evening with a glass of wine and a good book, you know the inspiration behind a new venture: Books on Tap, a social book club, brainchild of the Cape Girardeau Public Library staff and hosted by Ebb and Flow Fermentations at 11 S. Spanish St. in downtown Cape...

Wondering what to do to ring in the new year? Prepare yourself for 2020 vision at one of these events, all set for Tuesday. At the casino, 777 N. Main St. in Cape Girardeau '70s Themed new year's eve party Hosted by KFVS-TV and Century Casino Cape Girardeau (formerly Isle Casino Cape Girardeau)...