Throughout history symbols have been used in a variety of ways, often playing important roles. Each state has its own representative symbols--ranging from seals, flags, and buildings to rocks, minerals, plants, and animals--but how did they come to be chosen? In Catfish, Fiddles, Mules, and More, John C. Fisher provides an answer to that question for Missourians with a handy reference on the various official symbols of the state.Fisher explores each of the symbols adopted by the legislature as well as the state nickname and the legislative process in Missouri. A chapter is devoted to each symbol, providing information about when it was adopted, why it came to be considered as a state symbol, and how it relates to and is representative of the state. For those symbols that are items of economic importance to the state, the nature of their contribution is also explained. In the case of animal and plant symbols, their biology and where they occur within the state is presented.This important work, which includes thirty illustrations, will be helpful in acquainting Missourians and others interested in the state with not only the state's symbols but the history of Missouri as well. Because the symbols were adopted over a long period of time, much of Missouri's history has been included in the course of discussing them.Thoroughly researched and well written, Catfish, Fiddles, Mules, and More fills a niche for this kind of information in a way no other work has done. It will be valuable to anyone with an interest in Missouri, and it will be particularly useful to elementary and high school students in their study of the state.

Accompanying CD contains sound recordings of 39 tunes, by various performers.

Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. The Origins of the Missouria: Woodland, Mississippian, and Oneota Cultures -- 2. The Europeans Arrive: Change and Continuity -- 3. Early French and Spanish Contacts -- 4. Turmoil in Upper Louisiana -- 5. The Americans: Rapid and Dramatic Change -- 6. The End of the Missouria Homeland -- Epilogue: Allotment and a New Beginning -- For Further Reading and Research -- Index.

"Doris Land Mueller offers an adventurous account of the life of Confederate Army commander Meriwether Jeff Thompson. Thompson's military exploits in the Missouri Bootheel region earned him the nicknamed "Swamp Fox" from Union General Ulysses S. Grant, while his writing earned him the nickname "Poet Laureate of the Marshes"--Provided by publisher.

Although generations of readers of the Little House books are familiar with Laura Ingalls Wilder's early life up through her first years of marriage to Almanzo Wilder, few know about her adult years. Going beyond previous studies, Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder focuses upon Wilder's years in Missouri from 1894 to 1957. Utilizing her unpublished autobiography, letters, newspaper stories, and other documentary evidence, John E. Miller fills the gaps in Wilder's autobiographical novels and describes her sixty-three years of living in Mansfield, Missouri. As a result, the process of personal development that culminated in Wilder's writing of the novels that secured her reputation as one of America's most popular children's authors becomes evident. In addition to describing Wilder's apprenticeship as a farm newspaper columnist and occasional magazine writer before she began the production of her novels, Miller discusses Wilder's activities on her family's Rocky Ridge farm and as a vital citizen in Mansfield, Missouri. Playing out her many roles as wife, mother, chicken farmer, churchgoer, bridge player, seamstress, farm loan officer, and political candidate, Wilder led an active life for ninety years.

When Sen. Thomas Hart Benton, one of Missouri’s first two senators and the great-uncle of the famous regionalist painter of the same name, was expecting his second child in 1824, he hoped it would be a boy. Although he was graced instead with a second girl, he named her Jessie (in honor of his father, Jesse) and raised her more like a son than a nineteenth-century daughter, introducing her to the leading politicians of the day and making sure she received an education that emphasized history, literature, and languages. Jessie and her father were close; Senator Benton was the main influence in her life until 1841, when, at the age of seventeen, she married army explorer John Charles Frémont against her parents’ wishes. Some degree of reconciliation occurred when Benton promoted Frémont’s famous explorations of the Great West. Jessie remained in Missouri with the couple’s young daughter, Lily, but she later helped to write and edit reports of her husband’s adventures, and these narratives spread the lure of the West to nineteenth-century America. In 1849 Jessie and Lily made a harrowing and treacherous journey across the Isthmus of Panama to rendezvous with Frémont in San Francisco. With income from their gold mines, the Frémonts established a home in California. In 1856, with the country on the brink of civil war, Frémont’s antislavery position was instrumental in his being chosen as the Republican Party’s first presidential nominee. Jessie was a staunch campaigner for her husband’s unsuccessful presidential bid, which her father, a lifelong Democrat, refused to endorse. When President Lincoln appointed Frémont as the commander of the Department of the West in 1861, Jessie served as his unofficial aide and closest adviser. In a particularly dramatic incident, she rushed to Washington, D.C., for a meeting with Lincoln in which she argued passionately for her husband’s proposal to emancipate the slaves in Missouri. After the Civil War, the Frémonts’ financial situation took a downturn. Undaunted, Jessie supported the family by writing about her adventures in the American West in such works as A Year of American Travel and Souvenirs of My Time. Like many women of her era, Jessie lived her ambitions largely through her husband’s career, but she also made a name for herself as a writer and a firm opponent of slavery.

Although the state of Missouri is located hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean, ships with Missouri names and connections have served the United States for decades. In Missouri at Sea, Richard Schroeder tells about the ships that were named after the state, its cities, and its favorite sons and explores the important role that each has played in American history. For each vessel, a brief history is supplied, and the book is illustrated with many extraordinary images and photographs taken from official U.S. government records and archives. Schroeder begins his volume with the first St. Louis and other small early ships that were symbolic of America’s modest nineteenth-century commercial and political ambitions. The first Missouri, one of the earliest American steamships, depicts the United States’ move into the industrial and technological revolution of the nineteenth century. Another Federal St. Louis and a Confederate Missouri highlight the Mississippi River Civil War campaign. Schroeder then turns to America’s rise as a global military power at the beginning of the twentieth century with stories of the St. Louis in the Spanish-American War and the first battleship Missouri of Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet. The dominance of the U.S. Navy during World War II in the Pacific theater is illustrated by the fourth and most famous of all the ships to bear the name Missouri, whose deck was the site for the Japanese surrender. The advanced technological achievements of the mid-twentieth century are represented by the nuclear submarines named for one of Missouri’s favorite sons and for its capital: Daniel Boone and Jefferson City. Also highlighted in the volume is the 5,000-crew nuclear aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman, along with smaller ships named for Missouri war heroes. Missouri at Sea will appeal to those readers interested in naval history and technology or Missouri history.