Upcoming Events

11:30 a.m. Friends Annual Business Meeting

12:00 p.m. Catered Lunch

1:00 p.m. Speaker Presentation

The Friends Annual Meeting event begins with a brief business meeting, followed by a catered lunch, then a program from our guest speaker. Stephen L. Kling, Jr. will present on his book, American Revolutionary War in the West.

This is a ticketed event. A Friends of the Missouri State Archives membership guarantees one ticket to the event. Laura Ingalls Wilder members and higher levels guarantee two tickets to the event. Additional tickets are $25 each. Cash or check payment accepted at the door. RSVP required by all attendees. Reservations can be sent to [email protected]. Donations can be made here, or mailed to P.O. Box 242, Jefferson City, Mo., 65102.

Membership levels:

Membership runs July 1 - June 30

A presentation devoted to breathing life into an obscure French Colonial family who left their name on a Missouri city nestled on the west bank of the Mississippi River. The progenitor, Jean Baptiste Girardeau, was born in Moulins, France, in 1684. His story, told with that of his Canadienne wife, Thérèse Nepveu, and their two Illinois-born sons, Jean Pierre and Pierre, spreads across two continents and spans nearly an entire century.

    Presented by author Charlotte Young Slinkard

Nuked recounts the long-term effects of radiological exposure in St. Louis, Missouri—the city that refined uranium for the first self- sustaining nuclear reaction and the first atomic bomb. As part of the top-secret Manhattan Project during World War II, the refining created an enormous amount of radioactive waste that increased as more nuclear weapons were produced and stockpiled for the Cold War.

Unfortunately, government officials deposited the waste on open land next to the municipal airport. An adjacent creek transported radionuclides downstream to the Missouri River, thereby contaminating St. Louis’s northern suburbs. Amid official assurances of safety, residents were unaware of the risks. The resulting public health crisis continues today with cleanup operations expected to last through the year 2038.

Presented by author Linda C. Morice

The Jazz Age, a phenomenon that shaped American leisure culture in the early twentieth century, coincided with the growth of Kansas City, Missouri, from frontier town to metropolitan city. Though Kansas City’s music, culture, and stars are well covered, Queering Kansas City Jazz supplements the grand narrative of jazz history by including queer identities in the city’s history while framing the jazz-scene experience in terms of identity and space. Cabarets, gender impressionism clubs, and sites of sex tourism in Kansas City served as world-making spaces for those whose performance of identity transgressed hegemonic notions of gender, sexuality, race, and class.

Presented by Amber R. Clifford-Napoleone

At the turn of the twentieth century, people in Missouri experienced unexpected and horrible deaths due to arsenic. Two different women in two different areas of Missouri, and for two different reasons, used arsenic as a means to get what they wanted. Emma Heppermann, a black widow killer, craved money. Bertha Gifford, an angel of mercy, took sick people into her home and nursed them to death. Follow the trails of these women who murdered for decades before being tried and convicted. From Wentzville to Steelville, Emma left a trail of bodies. And Bertha is suspected of killing almost 10 percent of the population of the little town of Catawissa.

Presented by co-author Victoria Cosner