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Light the River
By Gregg Andrews I thought you might enjoy this brief article and song about one of the federal employees who kept the kerosene lights filled to guide steamboat pilots on the Mississippi River. In this case, the post-light keeper was a woman from South St. Paul, MN. Thanks to the National Park Service and singer/songwriter…
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Rescue Mission to Monkey Run: The Case of the Wiggs Children
“They were not only filthy, but literally covered with vermin, and almost half naked.”
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Up from Ralls County Slavery: Rev. Jesse Stepton Woods
By Gregg Andrews Born into slavery on June 24, 1859, in northeast Ralls County, Missouri, Jesse Stepton Woods and his mother, Nancy Woods, left the bottomlands between Marble Creek and Salt River, tributaries of the Mississippi, to celebrate a life of freedom in nearby Hannibal. They reunited with Nancy’s older children and her father, Nathan…
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A Navy “Yeowoman” from Hannibal in Near East Relief, 1919-1923
“I have seen and heard things over there that haunt me at night when I want to sleep. But I can’t talk much about them.”
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The Murder of a Slave on the Ralls County Harris Plantation
For nearly two centuries, the blood-splattered fate of Anderson has remained a dirty secret.
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Food for Hannibal’s “river rats” and “negroes”
“I have never seen a store like it. Cluttered with heaps of cheap groceries of every description, shelves sagging under the weight of canned goods of ancient vintage, flour piled high in sacks on the plank floor, candy greasy with age, and cheese that swells and moves! Foodstuff rotting in barrels and in sacks, dirt…
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The Ghost of Lizzie Clark
“When the prow of the steamer struck this frail craft, it cut through it like mist,” he said. “The ghostly occupant only laughed a sort of uncanny laugh, a half-scream, and when we had passed, I saw the spectral craft dancing on the waves behind.”
Lost River Stories
Invisibles of the Mississippi Valley.
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Lost River Stories 