History
I never aspired to write anything about our local history. When we started this series in 2011, I had no interest in publishing and focused on research. The fun was in the search and chase. I had spent the decade before climbing around the stacks in the old Howell County courthouse vault where...
During Christmas break from Mizzou in 1967, my mother and I were visiting my grandmother in Montier when her telephone rang (by then, she had one). Surprisingly, the call was for me. Lynn Spence (WSHS, 1964), my college roommate the previous year, wanted to speak to me.
Lynn had departed...
In the previous issue of the Howell County News, I enjoyed reading Lonnie Whitaker's musings on attending a class reunion and seeing old friends at the Alumni Picnic for Willow Springs High School. I was there as a graduate of the class of 1970 and enjoyed it too, though "old friends" is getting...
Each year the Alumni Weekend in Willow Springs brings back memories and provides an opportunity to reconnect with friends and discover new stories to share. This year was no exception.
After visiting with brother Jack (BTHS, 1961) and his pack of German shepherds on Friday, I received a text...
In my previous article, we explored the arrival of the Luster family in Howell County and the "Howell County News" started in 1895 by Charles and Mary Luster. Both had been involved in newspaper publishing for two decades in Brunswick, Missouri. Existing Howell County newspapers immediately set...
Some say Ozarkers have a peculiar dialect or twang when speaking. Over the years, since my days in Shannon and Howell County, I will admit to receiving comments about my accent and regional vocabulary by folks “not from around here.” Never refer to a small child as a “cute little outfit” to...
Howell County 1895 - What it Was and What it Is.
The "Howell County News" published its first edition in July 1895, and this incarnation of the paper (I suspect you are aware of a later paper with the same name) lasted until 1907. The editor looked at the county's past and present in its first...
For the past several years, and more recently since the pandemic, there’s been a surge in urban poultry farming. From my experience and perspective, “farming” is a poor choice of words, but nevertheless, cute little cedar henhouses have populated municipalities, and city dwellers are gathering “...
Nineteenth and early twentieth-century newspaper obituaries are a great source for historians and genealogists doing research. To our sensitivities, they often contain too much information, seem a bit harsh, and more resembled a news story. That is because the newspaper editor most often wrote...
In Part 1, I related the story about Buck Nelson, the hillbilly farmer from north of Mountain View, who, in the mid-1950s, claimed to have been visited by extra-terrestrial space aliens who took him on a trip to the moon, Mars, and Venus in a flying saucer. His tale stopped short of describing...