Presentation
Introduction and Research Background
MR. MICHAEL DICKEY: What I’m going to do, I think, in my approach tonight, I’ll talk to you a little bit about the actual history of Arrow Rock. And, then my experiences in researching and writing about those facets. I found that in writing this book, there was quite a bit of diversity. This was a general history book intended to introduce the reader to the history of the Arrow Rock area. I was approached by Kathy Borgman, the Executive Director of the Friends of Arrow Rock, about writing this book in 2002, I believe, that it was. And, they decided, at that time, that there was no comprehensive publication about the history of that town and the surrounding area. The last book that had been written was by Jean Hamilton called, Arrow Rock: Where Wheels Started West, was actually a little 60 page booklet that, I think, she wrote in 1961. And, that was the last publication, of any length, written about Arrow Rock.
Well, in the event that you don’t know, Arrow Rock has been a part of the Missouri State Park System as a historic site since 1923. And, in 1912, the Daughters of the American Revolution, through the National Old Trail Society, were working to put Arrow Rock on the map because of its historical connections to the Santa Fe Trail.
And, so we’ve been around for along time, in terms of, a recognized historic site. The Arrow Rock Tavern was the first building in Missouri set aside for preservation purposes with public funds. That was in September of 1923, Governor Dalton signed that act that appropriated money to purchase and restore the tavern.
So, we see that Arrow Rock was a birthplace in a lot of respects of a historic revival and historic restoration movement in Missouri.
So, because of that and the longevity of with which Arrow Rock has been around in that capacity, there are all kinds of publications out there about Arrow Rock, correct? No. I found that out in a hurry when I began scanning the literature. I -- the first thing I did, I went to the Missouri Historical Review and I thought, well surely there will be quite a few articles scattered through here about Arrow Rock. And, you could find mentions here and there, but they were always kind of glancing mentions about the town or the community’s history. What did they tend to dwell on more in the Missouri Historical Review was the DAR, Daughters of American Revolution, had a tea at the old tavern and so and so gave a talk and that was what I was finding.
So, I was really kind of perplexed and I had to broaden out my search. I did find a number of publications that mentioned Arrow Rock or at least indirectly pertained to Arrow Rock in the form of dissertations, research of some of my predecessors at Arrow Rock. I depended a lot on the file -- we had a lot of file material that -- papers that had been researched and so I started out with the -- the files there, right there at the site and began kind of working backwards and figuring out where things were.
But this little project took me a year and a half to get done. And, I will never write another book in a year and a half. Kathy Borgman kept cracking the whip. Where are you now? How far along are you? You know and I had to keep feeding these installments in, and then if she didn’t see anything in a couple of three weeks, she’d either come by my office or call on the phone or send me an e-mail. What have you got? So, she kept prodding me to do this. My wife kind of lost sight of me for that duration of that project because, of course, I work full-time for State Parks and we have weird hours anyway, when you’re working out in the field. And, so the best time to work and not compete with teenage children for use of the computer is between the hours of 10 a.m. and 3 in the morning. So, that’s when I did most of my work, in terms of, actually composing the material. So, that went on for about a year and half and finally in December of 2004, it came -- came out in publication. And, to date, it is still, I’m told; considered the most comprehensive book dealing with the history of Arrow Rock.
At the opening of the book, I pointed out that there is still a lot of room for research. There’s a lot of room to question the things that I wrote in this book. And, a person could take any topic, any chapter, that I covered in here and they could do a whole book about that. There is a lot of material there; it’s just, again, in different sources.
Let’s go to the first slide.
The Name Arrow Rock
What you have before you is a map drawn by a Frenchman named Pierre d’Anville in 1732. And, on this map is the earliest of mention of the name Arrow Rock. It appears right in the middle of the screen as “Pierre a Fleche”, and pardon my Missouri accent butchering French. That’s how I say it. Pierre a Fleche literally means rock of arrows. Now, the fact that the French would put this on a map in 1732 indicates that it was a pretty important landmark. And, there -- one of the things when I was researching, okay, where did the name Arrow Rock come from? I found a lot of interesting theories about where the name Arrow Rock came from. And, I went ahead and put them -- all of them in the book that I ran across. And, I stated what I believed about those. The most logical came from Major Stephen Long in 1819. He said that the name came from the fact that the neighboring Indians used to gather stone here to point their arrows, because the Arrow Rock bluff is -- does bear chert, which is a low-grade flint.
But there were a lot of other stories. One story said that there were two tribes. One up on top of the bluff, one across the river and they were in a war. They shot so many arrows at each other that everybody was finding arrows there and that’s why they called it Arrow Rock.
Then another story was that -- that some warriors were competing for the hand of the chief’s daughter and one of them shot his arrow clear over the Missouri River and it actually struck the bluff and stuck. And, the happy maiden cried, “Arrow Rock!”
Another one was that -- that it was called – actually in the Tennessee and Kentucky vernacular called Arrie Rock. You know, that southern drawl, and it got that name because of the breeze that would come up off the bottoms and the Indians would sit out there and feel the air coming up off of the river bottoms. There are all these wonderful stories out there.
And, although they are not factual, they are part of the folklore; people taught this and believed this for well over a hundred years. And, so I thought it was important to include that. I -- I state that yeah, this is just local folklore, but I think it adds a dimensional life to a book. And, it shows what people in times past thought about historical events and places that, you know, we may have a little better grasp of right now. But, this is the earliest map and the first time that that name appears. And, of course, Arrow Rock appears in later journals. Lewis and Clark, other explorers, as a landmark as they’re traveling up the Missouri River or across what became the state of Missouri.
So, it was a very noticeable feature right there on the Missouri River.
Next slide, please?
Arrow Rock Bluff Photograph
This is actually a photograph of the section of the Arrow Rock bluff. I -- as I did some research, I found nobody had a picture of the bluff anywhere. So, one day I went -- went down to the bottoms with a friend and a camera and we just walked up and down below the bluffs and took an assortment of pictures. Now, the Arrow Rock bluffs stretch intermittently for a distance of almost five miles. Historically, I believe, based on the descriptions of the explorers, there were two features, the Big Arrow Rock, and the Little Arrow Rock that stood out apart from the rest of the bluff. But, at the same time, I found this name Arrow Rock being loosely applied to this whole area for a five-mile stretch. But, I found nobody had any photographs of it. So, we went down and one day before the leaves budded out and took some pictures, because right now you could walk the whole bottoms and never know you’re right below a stone bluff; it is so grown up.
At that time, European explorers and so forth, the river came right up along the bluff and, of course, that kept all the trees and the brush scattered away from growing up the bluff face.
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Karl Bodmer’s Rendering
This is the earliest rendering that I could locate of the Arrow Rock bluff line. Right dead center in that picture, there is a prominent feature that looks like it’s hanging out over the water. And, we’re pretty confident that that is the Big Arrow Rock and that this view is what you used to see going up the river. And, of course, the Missouri River is shifted away from this channel. The intervening land is now a federal wildlife refuge. It’s impossible to recreate this view anywhere. You wouldn’t be able to see it. But, this sketch was drawn by Karl Bodmer in 1833. And, if you remember, Karl Bodmer went up the Missouri River with Swiss Prince Maximilian and made some of the most beautiful, ethnographical renderings of Plains Indians that we have. And, on the way up river, on the steamboat Yellowstone, that was one of the locations that he sketched. And, we find looking back at Bodmer’s sketches and paintings of these landmarks, in comparing them today with the features, they are remarkably accurate. And, you could almost stand in exactly the same spot. Figure out where he stood and do that. I wish we could do that here, but unfortunately, we -- we can’t anymore just because of the great change in the river bottoms.
Next slide.
Native Nations in the Arrow Rock Area
Okay, of course, one of the first things dealt with in my book was the native nations that occupied the area of the Inoma. That’s how you say Arrow Rock in Chiwere Siouan, the language of the Missouria’s, the Iowa’s that lived around here. “Ino”, meaning rock or stone face and “ma”, meaning arrow and, of course, the native nations utilized Arrow Rock extensively for the material. We, to this day, still find a lot of evidence that this was a manufacturing site. There was also a major trail that traversed what is now Missouri and headed on to the plains called the Osage Trace. And, it crossed the river at Arrow Rock and another branch of it followed the river parallel down to its junction with the Mississippi. But, there on your left, you see a Missouri Indian, and in the middle, an Osage woman and child, and on the right, an Osage warrior. Of course, these people played a prominent part. The thing about talking about their history is you have to rely on, pretty much on, the words of your Europeans who visited with them. We have very little written in their own words until very late. And, so these earlier time periods, you just have to rely solely on the European material and you have to take that with a grain of salt, because they had their biases. Their main interest in dealing with Indian tribes was trade, and military alliances, and beyond that, they often don’t tell us anything about these -- these people.
Next slide.
Osage Trading House
Arrow Rock the first type of a permanent establishment, if I can use that word, was the Osage Trading House. During the War of 1812, Fort Osage which is in Jackson County, Missouri, was abandoned by the government, because it was so far out in the frontier it was deemed pretty well useless for defense. However, trade with the Osage Indians was very important to continue, because if the Osages did not get trade goods from the United States, they were going to go get them from the British and we were fighting and we certainly didn’t want that to happen. So, the trading component of Fort Osage was moved to Arrow Rock. That drawing is a reconstruction based on a very good description left by George C. Sibley. And, Sibley went on to become one of the first commissioners of the Santa Fe Trail and later went on and founded Lindenwood College in St. Charles, which I think, is now considered the fastest growing university in the state of Missouri.
So, Arrow Rock became that site and influential in keeping -- helping maintain peaceful relation with the Osages through the War of 1812, while other tribes sided with the British.
And, next slide.
Arrow Rock Ferry
Arrow Rock, really, in terms of starting its first permanent settlement or establishment, as a place for settlers is owed, in large measure, to the ferry. Ferry was established on the river, some accounts said 1811. I think that’s a little too early. There was not a large influx of American settlers into the area until about 1815. The first documented mention of the ferry we find is in 1817. And, it says that the ferry is well-known and well- established. So, I figure, well, it’s been there at least a couple of three years. So, some time around 1815, the ferry was established. On your left, is a photograph of a very simple ferry that’s probably very much like the style that was used originally, based on the written descriptions we have, although this photograph was taken about 1890 or 1900. It is on the Missouri River. I found that picture, and of all places, EBAY. And, I looked at that one day and I said, well you know, that may not be at Arrow Rock, but that’s just an awful good rendition of a -- of a -- the simple Missouri River ferry that they had to pull and pull across, so I got that picture to include in the book. And, the ferry operated until 1927, and it was a major link in the early road system going across. And, that’s the ferryboat Hope down in the bottom right-hand corner. I think the Hope was running around 1900 to 1910. The last ferry made its run in 1927 and, I think, that was the Santa Fe run by the Kuhn Brothers. And, after that, the ferry closed down because they opened bridges at Boonville and Glasgow and some of us would like to have a ferry back, because it’s a long way to drive to Glasgow or Ferryville or Boonville to get to the other side of the river.
As important as the ferry was, there’s not an awful lot of information about it. Occasionally, I could find mentions in county court records, mainly Howard County, of the ferry being licensed there. But, there’s a lot of confusing and conflicting information about ferries. And sometimes as I read through sources I found, secondary sources that, I think, were talking about ferries further upstream or downstream. And, sometimes it got a little muddled. The records aren’t always good and precise as -- as we would like them to be.
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The Santa Fe Trail
Of course, from the ferry crossing, the road to the west led to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and economic opportunity. The -- the Osage Trace, the Indian trail that went through Arrow Rock to the west, basically, became the Santa Fe Trail. And today, much of it is what is now modern Highway 24 and connecting roads. And, of course, people from the area of Arrow Rock were involved with the Santa Fe trade. We typically said, well, the Santa Fe Trail started in Franklin, which I agree would be the precise way to say that. But, there’s also a reference by Josiah Gregg, a Santa Fe trader who chronicled the trade a great deal in 1844 and delved into the early history. And, he said that Franklin, as well as a number of neighboring towns, were involved in the trade. And, that even after 1831, there were many caravans or expeditions fitted out in this central part of the state. So, as I researched this, we kind of been led to believe and having grown up in Independence, Missouri, I was always taught that Independence was where the Santa Fe Trail started. But that, of course, is not true. But, the Boosters up there will still tell you that. And, I say, well, it started there, if that’s where you went to get on the trail. There were still people out here. And, I found evidence, that as late as the 1850’s, maybe even the beginning of the Civil War, we still had people in Arrow Rock, Fayette, Boonville, and Columbia, of all places, involved in the Santa Fe trade making money off of it and outfitting caravans. Maybe -- maybe not to the extent as was happening in Independence and Westport, but I found definite proof that there was still that strong of a connection.
And, to let you all know how important the Santa Fe trade was, I actually believe that the trade helped deliver Missouri from an economic depression, the Panic of 1819. By all accounts that I’ve read, if we thought the Great Depression of the 1930’s was a horrific event, until you read about the Panic of 1819; I don’t think you know what a real depression is. It was extremely severe in the country and particularly out here in the west. And, the Santa Fe trade with the independence of Mexico and traders from the area going down there taking goods that had no market in Missouri and the western territories; they could take it to the Mexican people who had gold and silver mines in the mountains nearby and they had nothing to buy, so it was just hand in glove type of a thing. And, without going into a lot of detail on my research, I did find, that really that helped turn the state of Missouri around economically.
And, there were lasting effects or repercussions in the form of the Missouri mule that came out of the Santa Fe trade and, of course, Missouri is a mule-producing state. It was famous right up to the 1920’s. And, it had its roots in the Santa -- beginning of the Santa Fe trade.
But, a lot of Arrow Rock people were involved. I didn’t find any direct evidence of caravans outfitting in the town of Arrow Rock. But I did find a lot of evidence of people, Turley’s, Cooper’s, McMahan’s that were all Arrow Rock citizens; Lefler, all of these, Philip Thompson whose house still stands at -- right outside of town. All these people were involved in the Santa Fe trade and some of them right up to the beginning of the Civil War.
Okay, next slide.
This gives you a little perspective why Arrow Rock became important. Location is everything. And, society -- whether society lives or dies or thrives, in large measure, I think, is due to its location, communication, transportation, the ability to produce products, and to receive finished products. And, Arrow -- for Arrow Rock it had location. Unlike many of its predecessor towns, such as Franklin, it was not built in the river bottoms. Franklin and a number of other towns of the Missouri River were continually inundated, swept away, and people final got sick of it and moved -- moved out.
Boone’s Lick Trail
The town founders of Arrow Rock, in June of 1829, had just witnessed the last remains of Franklin, about 10 miles away in Howard County, fall into the Missouri River. And they said, well, we’re not going to repeat that mistake, so they built on top of the Arrow Rock bluff, a good 90 feet above the river level. And, if you see that little jagged line coming up from the St. Charles area, that’s the Boone’s Lick Trail. That’s a major westward path of immigration. Not much is said or known about it outside of Missouri. But, a very important trail for people heading west if you went overland instead of on the river, you went on the Boonslick Road from St. Charles up to that crossing point on the Missouri River. So, most everybody that was coming from the east or the south was coming up that road and it conveyed a tremendous amount of traffic. And, then of course, the trail crosses the river at Arrow Rock. You have the Missouri River, which is a major, major source of transportation. Being on the Missouri River was like living next to I-70 in its day. And, you got your gas station, and your restaurant by I-70, you’re in good shape. You know if you’re back four or five miles, times can get a little tougher for you.
So, Arrow Rock had location and why there? Well, you had the river going north and south right there, which meant it had to be crossed. Because if you went too far south you were in the Ozark Hills, up and down and all around over rocky timber terrain, not very good for wagons or driving ox or anything like that. If you went too far north of Arrow Rock, in that big bend where it curves back to the east, that used to be some of the swampiest ground in Missouri, outside of the bootheel. So, what you had was almost like a funnel effect. Everything had to funnel through the Arrow Rock vicinity going west. So, even after the establishment of towns like Kansas City, Westport, St. Joseph, people heading west still had to come up that trail or up the river and they came through Arrow Rock.
Next slide, please?
Boonslick Country
And, Arrow Rock, of course, was part of what was historically known as the Boonslick country or the Boons- lick region. The name came from the salt works of Nathan and Daniel Morgan Boone, based on some written descriptions that I found in the Franklin Intelligencer newspaper and some early journals. We had a description of what the Boonslick country entailed. And, basically, it was the Missouri Valley for about 25 miles on either side of the river. And, this shaded area gives you an idea of how populated. And, we know that people coming west, literally, leaped over much of the state to come settle here. And, all the way up into the 1830’s. From 1815, up into the middle 1830’s, this was the primary destination for most people coming west looking for land and for settlement. The Boonslick area there and we kind of have the core-periphery highlighted, and Arrow Rock was in that core.
And, to the right, that’s one of Daniel -- Daniel Boone coming through the Cumberland Gap painted by George Caleb Bingham. And, that’s just sort of a representation of the westward migration that came this way. We have a Baptist Missionary, John Mason Peck, in St. Charles, who actually said it seemed as though Kentucky and Tennessee were breaking up, and moving west. He said caravan after caravan bypassed the prairies of Illinois, all bound for the Boonslick. All bound for this central part of the state.
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Town Name Changes
And, of course, because of all this activity on the river, the Santa Fe Trail, all of the settlement coming into the area, the town of Arrow Rock established above the ferry crossing. So we welcome you to Arrow Rock, I mean, Philadelphia, no, I mean, New Philadelphia. Well, it’s Arrow Rock, cause Arrow Rock went through name changes. When it was found in 1829, it was officially designated Philadelphia. The town blocks were laid out in the same pattern as its namesake. And, of course, our town fathers aspired to become a great city, just as Philadelphia was at that time.
A lot of the travelers coming through this area called it New Philadelphia, in an attempt to distinguish it from the Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. And, finally in 1833, by an act of the State Legislature, the name of the town was changed to Arrow Rock. Well, we had a landmark there that for 100 years had been called Arrow Rock. And, probably everybody that came through said, isn’t this Arrow Rock? No, this is Philadelphia. Well Arrow Rock’s right here. So, they gave it up and said, okay, we’ll go with the name change here. But, you can see from this, this is the 1896 plat map. And, the original part of the town is kind of laid out there in the greenish and then the Bingham’s Addition; Jacob Bingham’s Addition is highlighted there in the pink part. But, it gives you an idea that Arrow Rock, even though it was on the bluff, it was situated directly by the Missouri River. And, you can see that the roads -- how the roads come in and radiate out from it on the west.
Okay, and next slide, please?
Arrow Rock Township
And, of course, Arrow Rock and Arrow Rock township, my history I found, I could not confine it to the town boundaries because people -- this is like today. Their mailing address is Arrow Rock, they may live outside of town a mile or two or three. So, I looked at the township as a whole, because people in the township when they voted, when they assembled for militia musters, when they got their mail, when they bought goods, they would go to that town in the central part of the state.
Arrow Rock Famous Citizens
A lot of famous people associated with Arrow Rock. And, this is only a handful of them. Down in the bottom, I have the -- well, I’ll start from the left. Dr. George Penn, besides being a physician, he surveyed the boundary between Arkansas and Missouri. He also served as a subagent to the U.S. Treasury. Next one was Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson--tried to get Missouri into the Confederacy. He is an Arrow Rocker. Dr. Matthew Walton Hall, well-known civic leader. On the right, John Sappington Marmaduke, Governor of Missouri in 1880 and a major general in the Confederacy. Down at the bottom, Nathaniel Beverly Tucker had a plantation near Arrow Rock called Ardmore and went on to become the Dean of William and Mary College in Virginia and wrote a novel in 1836 predicting the Civil War, of all things. Very interesting. But, just a handful of the type of people who became influential in state and national affairs in Arrow Rock.
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And, of course, Dr. John Sappington left us a medical legacy. There’s quite a bit of information on Dr. Sappington. Lynn Morrow, here at the State Archives, Dr. Sappington is one of his favorite subjects and I did pilfer some of Lynn’s stuff when I was writing this, but there’s no sense in reinventing the wheel when you’re researching and writing material. There are authors who’ve done good work. And, I think it’s okay to use, you know, build on their resources. I mean, very few people are original writers, anyway. Most everybody’s building on ideas, concepts, and research that people have done before them. And, I’m positive that the stuff that I’ve done some day somebody’s going to take some of the things that I’ve done in this book and build on them and that’s -- that’s okay. I want people to say, hey, this is good enough that I can work with it and go a step further or take it in a different direction.
But, Dr. Sappington here. He developed a mass market of quinine to treat malaria. Now, quinine had been around for nearly 100 years or better before Dr. Sappington got a hold of it. But, he’s the first physician that really worked in breaking down the bark of the cinchona tree from Peru and getting that quinine substance out of it. And, of course, he was mass marketing his pills by 1832.
And, everybody had malaria. You know, we think of it as a tropical disease in South America, Central Africa. Well, I can tell you everybody in the United States, especially the Midwest and the South had malaria.
And, one thing my research recovered -- I uncovered was just seeing how sick people got, and how often they got sick, and how many of them died. Now, I don’t disparage -- I’m making some commentary now. The other -- oh, earlier this summer, I heard an NBC News broadcast and the announcer was going on about it’s the beginning of West Nile virus season. And, this commentator talked about, well, we’ve had 100 people die in the last five years because of West Nile and you need to take these precautions and so forth and so on. And, really he started sounding pretty alarmist about it.
Now, I have sympathy for families and people who get it and die. But, I thought about it in perspective. And, this is one thing you should do with history is put things in perspective. A hundred people out of a population of 300 million have died over five years from a disease. We -- I found we had that many people die in a week or a month in Arrow Rock, when it was a small community under 1000, from these things. And, I go, wow, think of the social upheaval that that causes if you have that many people dying at one time from an epidemic, you know. And we say, well, that was bad for Arrow Rock. It happened all up and down the Missouri River and, in fact, when the stuff got even further west to the Indian tribes, you’re talking about half of an Indian tribe being annihilated within a space of a few weeks from smallpox, cholera, whatever. So, malaria was one of these big diseases. Not so much a killer, but it was there, it inflicted you, you got the shakes, you got chills, fevers continually. And Dr. Sappington built a financial and a political legacy out of selling the little pills, because they worked.
Okay, next slide.
And, of course, Arrow Rock’s most famous resident is George Caleb Bingham and he was also one of America’s foremost artists of the 19th Century. There are multitudes of publications written about the life of Bingham. He’s very well documented because he is such a well-known artist. And, that is a photograph of him, I think, about 1859. A couple of his works, Watching the Cargo, Jolly Flatboatmen, which is one of my personal favorites. And, then the Bingham house, below in the snow, which is part of the State Historic Site and is also a National Historic Landmark.
Bingham was pretty easy to do. Like I said, there’s just tons of information on him. A lot of people have written good books. So, basically I just tried to encapsulate and pull out some of the best elements of what’s already been written about him to give a little summary. In fact, there’s too much information on Bingham. Again, Bingham is one of those persons that you can just write volumes about because he is so well-known and well- documented.
Next slide, please?
Missouri River Transportation
And, of course, I’ve already mentioned the Missouri River. And the Missouri was the mother of all transportation and commerce in the state for a number of years, until the railroads began taking that title. In the 1870’s, the vast majority of commerce and economic prosperity in the state depended on the Missouri. That was an etching in a book that I found, and it was called, A Scene on the Missouri River. And, that picture showed all the variety of craft that were operating on the Missouri River in the 19th Century. There’s canoes and dinghies and rafts and side-wheeler steamboats, and pound boats. And, again that was another EBAY find, believe it or not.
On the lower right, is the only picture we have of the waterfront of Arrow Rock. And, you can see the front of the warehouses that used to be along the river there. All that now that you see is water, is grown up, and is kind of marshy ground and cotton forest. The excursion boat, Idlewild, up above that.
Okay, next slide, please?
Hemp and Tobacco Production
Arrow Rock depended greatly on the river for transportation, for commerce. The goods of the lands, the produce of the land was loaded up there at the river, taken down to market in St. Louis and, in many cases, went even further south. And, what the main produce -- that quickly became the main produce, by the 1830’s, was hemp. And, Arrow Rock shipped a majority of hemp out of Saline County. That was the cash crop of choice. And, number two, was tobacco. And, then of course, a number of mules were produced. And, all this stuff was being shipped down to the delta region to support the cotton plantations.
Claiborne Fox Jackson and a number of his friends and family were shipping stuff down there. And, what they were doing with the hemp was they were making cordage to tie cotton bales. To a lesser extent, it was also being made into rope for the, you know, mast of sailing ships. But, the vast majority of it was being used for tying up cotton bales. And, of course, the mules were sent down there to work in the fields. A lot of grain, a lot of pork was shipped that way to feed them. Because, I think, probably -- you folks probably realized that the South got so into cotton production, they almost weren’t growing anything else or doing anything else but cotton. And, Missouri and our area up in the middle part of the state, we were supplying their needs.
So, to make all this work, this is very labor intensive work; growing hemp, growing tobacco, is two of the most labor intensive things you can do. And, these photographs here, that funny looking object on the right; that is a hemp press. And, that press was standing in a field out in Saline County until the 1950’s. I wish we -- somebody would have saved it and we would have had it. Down below, is a field, probably of corn, just outside of Arrow Rock. And, then, that’s the towns and livery stable that was right in the middle of town, just right over by the Lyceum Theatre. But, to do all this produce, took hard labor. So, where did we get the hard labor?
Next slide. I think I’m in the right sequence.
Slavery in Arrow Rock
You had to have slaves. And, of course, Missouri was a slave state. Slavery was very, very pronounced and predominant in the counties bordering the Missouri River. And, Saline County, Howard County, Lafayette County, that Boonslick Region, 35 percent or more of our population was composed of African Americans. Now, a number of them worked in the hemp and tobacco plantations. But, unlike the South, where the field hands worked pretty much year round in the cotton fields, Missouri had a little seasonal break because of our winters and so forth. And, so very often, they trained these enslaved people in other skills like carpentry, cabinet making, brick making, wheelwright, wagon wrights, and so forth. So, when -- once the growing season was over, you used your slaves for other building projects. So, one of those projects was the stone gutters lining the streets of Arrow Rock. And, we believe that African Americans were cutting that stone and laying it under the direction of a -- of an “engineer”, but they were actually doing the work.
I’m actually convinced, that when you come to Arrow Rock today and you look around and you see the 19th Century buildings and houses, most of what you’re looking at was built by African American craftsmen. And, that was a significant part of our history. And, of course, there’s more about the African American story than just slavery.
Emancipation and Freed Men
We have the story about emancipation. We have -- in Arrow Rock, we have a community of freed men that are growing, they’re developing their own churches, their own schools, their own social institutions such as lodges and they’re doing this independently of the people who were formally their masters. In fact, Arrow Rock grew into quite a community. Nearly 50 percent of our community, from the end of the Civil War up to the 1950’s, early 1950’s, 50 percent of Arrow Rock, was African American. So, there’s a very rich tradition there about the African American experience from slavery through emancipation to -- to freedmen. And, that is a story that I try to bring out in the book. And, that was a difficult one to do. There’s not a lot of information written and, fortunately, I was able to refer to some works by Dr. Gary Kremer and some others. The Friends of Arrow Rock had some archeological projects going on for over five years at some of the residence and lodge hall that belonged to African American citizens. And, so --I was able to use a lot of that archeological material in interpretation and to talk about what these people were doing in Arrow Rock.
And, the story that emerged as I did this, you know, this is really -- this is really the untold story. And, the fact that these people were an integral part of the economic and social structure of Arrow Rock; they made a lot of things work in Arrow Rock. And, I think, the fact that after the Civil War so many freed blacks moved to the community, they actually helped keep the community from collapsing because it was in decline following the Civil War. So, very important story there and, you know, it’s unfortunate that we didn’t start many years ago, but I found I had to rely a lot on oral traditions that had been handed down from family members or that had been gathered by interesting -- interested Arrow Rock citizens, because there were not a lot of records. And, I checked county court records and they had asked me, oh, is this -- is this a black property in Arrow Rock that you’re looking into? And, I say, yeah. Oh, well, you probably won’t find anything. And, the reason that happened is one time I talked to Reverend Todd, the last pastor of Brown’s Chapel, the African Methodist Episcopal Church there. I asked him about records, once when I was a young whipper snapper there in 1986. And, he said, well, we just don’t have many records. And, I said, well, why not? And, he said, well, because, he said, if those records got into the wrong hands, he said, names could be erased and other names written in and you could lose your house and your property and just all kinds of things. And, I went, wow! So, there were purposely not a lot of records kept because of corrupt county officials who would use that and manipulate that. So, just a lot of interesting things that I carried through there. And, again, this is an area that needs a lot of research and I -- I just got barely into the surface of it and it needs to be delved into even more.
Next slide, please?
Of course, education, social, religious life that this provided stability for black and white societies in Arrow Rock. And, I tried going through and looking at the inner relationship of churches and schools, lodges, because I found, that very often in doing this research, that you find lodges supporting education efforts. You find very often, schools using the churches as a building before school buildings are built. And, of course, the lodges, in a day before insurance, belonging to a lodge helped ensure that if something happened to you, your brothers in the lodge or the sisters in the fraternal order were going to help support your family and get them back on their feet, if something should happen to you.
Segregation
Arrow Rock had separate schools, of course. Down below is a photograph of one of the classes of one of the white schools about 1890. Up above it, is a photograph from 1943 of the African American school, the building which still stands on the north side of town as a private residence. And, in the upper right, is Brown’s Chapel that I mentioned a little bit ago. That building was built in 1869 and served as the first school for African Americans in Arrow Rock and that has recently undergone extensive restoration through the Friends of Arrow Rock.
So, this was really complex in trying to plug this stuff together. I found it really to be a challenge because it is very much interwoven. And, Arrow Rock segregation was a fact of life. So, blacks had their schools and lodges. And, the whites had theirs. But, I actually did find a few examples in the written records, where from time to time, on rare occasions, where both groups came together to help each other out. One of the -- one of the African American churches burned down and whites from one of the neighboring white churches actually went and helped build that, which I thought was pretty remarkable considering the timeframe and the general attitude. There were still people, that in spite of the realities and the hardships of segregation and racism, there were still a few people that were a good-hearted enough to -- to pitch in and help; some not all.
Next slide, please?
Women in Arrow Rock
This was the other difficult subject, women. And, the 19th Century it’s really hard to find -- I found it difficult to find a lot of written information about women and women’s roles in society or especially in Arrow Rock. And, I know they were there. I know they were important, and I know they caused a lot of things to happen, but finding it was difficult.
I did find one reference written by Thomas Rainey, one of the very early chroniclers of Arrow Rock in about 1910. And his explanation for it was that women were modest and chaste and they just did not want their name out there. So, they stayed behind the scenes, and so it was a real challenge to -- to find very much, same way with children. Children were to be seen and not heard. And, of course, so what you end up with, a preponderance of information is written by white males about white males. And, these other things are here, but they are very difficult and you have to like pan for gold in any number of archives and resources to kind of begin to put together a picture of what the role of those people were.
And, I’ll tell you a little bit of what we have there. In the middle, is Mattie and Sallie Cobb that’s a Daguerreotype taken about 1859. And, those girls actually lived in the tavern with their parents, who were the managers of the Arrow Rock Tavern. And, while the Cobbs were the managers, four of their kids died within the space of a year, from various childhood ailments, including the little girl there, I think, on the right, scarlet fever. And, the dour looking lady here on the left, Mrs. Nave. Actually, I found an earlier picture of her and she was quite a pretty women. She’s just lost her teeth now, like so many people did in the 19th Century. And, in the bottom right, is Eliza Thomas, who was George Caleb Bingham’s wife and that’s a portrait that he painted of her down there.
Even though in the 19th Century we don’t see or hear a lot about women, we know that, for instance, when the Civil War came about, most of the men ended up in the military, on one side or the other, and the women took over the job of managing the shops and running their farms. And, it is interesting, we do have -- there is access to letters of some of these women who were writing to their husbands about what’s going on at the farm and the store and so forth. And, I think, you know, of course, that eventually gave impetus to the suffrage movement, because women found out, by golly, I can run these things. I know how these things work, and so forth. And, so what we have on the top, by the 20th Century the tables were turned. Men no longer ran Arrow Rock, the women ran Arrow Rock in the 20th Century. And that little group photo there, I think, taken about 1984, is a group of some of our leading ladies, most of them now deceased, but a couple of them still alive. And, I was privileged to know all those ladies before they passed away. And, when I say they ran Arrow Rock, I mean, they ran Arrow Rock. And, I would get a phone call from one of those darling ladies, in my office, and they would say; now Mike, this is what the state’s going to do at the event this weekend. And, Stanley Fast, back there, used to be my supervisor and I’d call him up and say; Stan, I just got told this is what we’re doing at the special event this weekend. And, Stan would say, well, just go with the flow, the darling ladies.
In the right, upper right, that’s Sallie Hailey inspecting the outside of what -- the building known as the old courthouse. And, Sally -- her ancestors were from Arrow Rock, of course. She was born and raised in Arrow Rock and her ancestors had been in Arrow Rock since the beginning. Sallie was the first woman in the state of Missouri to hold a cabinet-level position.
So, Arrow Rock has produced a lot of firsts in a lot of different ways.
Okay, next slide, please?
Abolitionism and the Civil War
Of course, in the book, I get into the subject of abolitionism, Judge Lynch, the Civil War, and reconstruction. And, of course, that just broke the old mold. I was talking to you about slavery and the hemp plantations and tobacco plantations. While we weren’t growing cotton, that plantation mentality in Missouri was the same as it was in the South. And, with an economic system built on -- on the issue of slavery and supporting slavery and remember most of the food and goods that we’re producing as being shipped to Mississippi, Louisiana, the delta country in support of the cotton plantations. So, when the Civil War breaks out, or where even before, when there’s talk of abolishing slavery, the good citizens of Arrow Rock in Saline County, 90 percent of them just said, well, that is outrageous and we’re opposed to it. When the war finally came, probably the vast majority of Arrow Rock citizens supported the Confederacy. Of course, the Governor of the state was from Arrow Rock and he was very much pro-Confederate. I don’t know how well that picture shows up in the middle, again, I apologize. That’s actually an etching of a lynching going on.
And, in 1859, we just had a horrible, horrible slew of lynchings going on in Arrow Rock and Marshall and other communities around us. There was just such hostility to the idea of freeing slaves that -- that -- that even African Americans who tried to stay out of the way and not become high profile just became the targets of mob violence. And, I documented that in the book. And, there was just considerable material because the people who were involved in fomenting mob violence, they weren’t shy about writing letters to the editor of the local papers. And, of course, there’s a good supply of the papers over at the State Historical Society to refer to.
Bushwhackers and Guerrillas
And, these two gentlemen here; these were tintypes taken in Arrow Rock during the war years. The fella on the left, I’m positive, is a bushwhacker, a guerrilla. He has long curly locks and he’s wearing a Confederate shell jacket and that’s just pretty typical of the bushwhackers and the guerrillas that infested the area. The guy on the right, I think, is pro-Union. The reason I say that, is he’s a little more clean-cut, clean shaven, and he has his hand on a book. I’m not sure what it is, probably a book of law. And, that Corinthian column, it’s showing that he’s defending law and order. He’s defending the republic.
Division in Arrow Rock
But, Arrow Rock was a very divided community. In doing my research, I found very interesting things. There were snipers at Arrow Rock that were shooting at the riverboats going up and down the river. And, it got to be such a nuisance that the federal forces sent a gunboat up the river and they actually shelled the town. And, I read that and I go, wow! You know that’s the first time they -- you’d think that would be a major thing, that there would be a lot of information about, but, surprisingly, it was very, very scarce. And, the main thing was that the -- the Masonic Lodge records, of all places, mentioned that, I think, it was August the 8th, 1861, said this is the first time that we’ve not held our regular meeting since the lodge was formed because of the gunboat that shelled the town. Everybody fled to outside the city limits. And, later there was a -- later on in September, there was a convention of the Methodist church in there going southern, Southern Methodist, and met at Arrow Rock. And one of the reverends wanted to actually convene over closer to Lexington, because Lexington had just been captured by General Price and the state guard forces. And, he said this would be a more secure location. Well, they taunted him and made fun of him and -- for being a coward, or such, and then somebody announced that there was a riverboat approaching the town and everybody fled and panicked, because they thought it was another gunboat coming to shell the town.
So, I found that information and I said that’s really intriguing. It was just amazing to me, that there wasn’t more about it. I can only hypothesize, that most of the shelling was noisemaking, rather than actually blowing the buildings apart or anything of that nature.
But the war, we had no major battles in Arrow Rock. But, there are extensive records about troop movements in and out of Arrow Rock. And, in every respect, it’s just like reading about trying to live from day to day if, you know, you imagine all the news reports that you hear about Iraq or Afghanistan or what went on in Serbia and Croatia and stuff -- same type of stuff going on in our own backyard. And, you just could -- when somebody knocked at the door, you didn’t know who was going to be there. And, it could be a man with a gun like this and you think this is a guerrilla, right now I’m pro-Confederate. And, it’s actually a Union solider, masquerading in an attempt to trap you. Well, and vice versa. You think, okay, these guys are Union soldiers; they’re guerrillas, in confiscated clothing, trying to trap you. And, imagine trying to live like that--very, very difficult, very dangerous times. And, that was a good part of what went on and, of course, that pulled apart Arrow Rock’s economic stability.
Next slide, please? And, I am getting close to the end.
Post-Civil War
Following the war, there was a quantum change for a few years, there was glimmer of hope that Arrow Rock would return to its days of glory. It had a population of over 1,000 and was a major river port. Even in 1868, it was still considered the busiest river port between St. Louis and Kansas City. There were over 100 homes inside city limits. There were 14 stores. We had paved sidewalks. And, you can come up and see those big paved stone sidewalks today. And, we had macadam streets. What a macadam street is, is it’s crushed gravel on the road. And, we were doing that in the 1850’s. And, we bragged that we were the only town in Saline County that did it.
Now, it didn’t mean that the road didn’t get muddy. It just meant that the road didn’t get so muddy that you sank up to your axle or up to your knees in it. That macadam helped provide a firmer surface.
And, this picture, this is taken about 1890. This was given to us by a woman who was cleaning out her closet. She was in California, I think, and she was a descendent of an Arrow Rock person. It says, cleaning out the attic and I found a shoebox with some old photographs in it. Do you want them? And, I say, sure. So, she brings this photograph in and I about pass out. We have very few photographs of the whole town. So, you just never know where stuff is going to come from. You think, oh, surely everything’s been found by now, no, it hasn’t. I am amazed at the amount of materials that keep coming out.
But, we had an Odd Fellows, a Masonic hall; we had four physicians, and a dentist, woolen factory, flour mills, lumber yards, saw mills, waterfront warehouses, two schools, four churches, a billiard hall, and an art gallery. And, we had the only solvent bank in the entire county after the war. So, Arrow Rock, even in the doldrums, looked like it was going to come roaring back and prosper.
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The Fire of 1872
But, the reality set down. In 1872, we had a fire that leveled the business district. And, this led to lynchings. Because it was ascertained that this fire was caused either arson, either deliberate arson, or from a bunch of drunks getting together and horsing around and setting a building on fire.
Now, when you write a history, I was always told that you have to use written sources. You can’t rely on oral traditions da, da, da, for history, because the -- the written word has more veracity and such to it. And, I found in researching this, no, it doesn’t. It -- just like -- it -- you read accounts and it just like -- well, it depends on who you’re reading, what their motives are, what they saw, and when they saw it. The fire of 1872 that leveled the business district, I found several newspaper accounts, none from Arrow Rock, because we really don’t have very many papers that survived, but the Jefferson City Inquirer, I think, it was the Inquirer, and several others that gave details of the fires. It said our correspondent in Arrow Rock says, and I find a wide variation of what went on. One account says that the three men that were lynched were blacks. Another account says one is black. Another one says two of them are black. I don’t know who was and who wasn’t and trying to figure it out is quite a puzzle. But, I am confident; somebody was lynched over this arson and this fire. Anyway, I’m not positive that it was arson. And, that led to a temperance movement in town. They closed up bars. They charged all of a sudden dram shop fees went up from like $25.00 to $500.00 and such. And, it did more than the temperance movement ever did to shut down the saloons and so forth in Arrow Rock.
The Fire of 1901 and Impact of the Railroads
Well, then Arrow Rock had another devastating fire in 1901. Each time the town got leveled, they built back less, because the economy was declining, because steamboat traffic was declining, because the railroads were taking all the business. And, the railroads, of course, were expanding in the territories that a riverboat couldn’t go. So, what you had -- and the railroads, of course, weren’t affected by seasonal limits like steamboats. So, all this changes in technology begin changing the demographics. Arrow Rock, the Boonslick country had also been on the wrong side of the war, so they lost their political pull, their economic pull. And actually, before the war, this was the political and economic center of the state, not St. Louis. But, after the war, we were, to borrow a phrase, “Gone with the Wind”. And, St. Louis and Kansas City just exploded in growth. The young men, black and white alike in Arrow Rock, said I can go get a better paying job up in Kansas City or St. Louis. So, they left in droves and our population just steadily, steadily dwindled until we were practically a ghost town.
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Historical Revival
Now, Arrow Rock experienced a historical revival. I alluded at the beginning about the Daughters of the American Revolution, in 1912, took an interest in the tavern, that led to it becoming the first building in Missouri to be preserved with public funds. And, I did a little comparison photo there. One of the tavern in 1912, one of it today. On the bottom, kind of showing how our museum interpretation has changed. There’s in our museum and exhibit today, a museum exhibit that was done in 1912 in the tavern. But the point of it is, is we became a leader in teaching Missouri history and in saying, hey, we’ve got things that need to be preserved and need to be passed on to future generations.
Next slide.
And, the question now actually looms before us. Will Arrow Rock’s historic legacy continue for another generation? And, I think that’s true. I look in writing this book and in working with the public every day. I ask myself, why are people or are people interested in history or not? And, why? And we find that a lot of times, you know, kids are so into the electronic stuff. I know, from personal experience, that they are so into the electronic stuff sometimes they don’t see the importance or the value of history. And, so we have that question, are people going to be interested enough in historic preservation? Preserving manuscripts in places like the State Archives and so forth.
Next slide.
And, that’s part of the reason or one of the reasons, I wrote my book. I wanted to instill in people a sense of history. That’s why I used a combination of oral history. I used anecdotes. I say when they’re anecdotes, because you can’t prove them. But, to me, using oral history, using anecdotes, those things add an element of life, because they’re in the words of how people told things or how people say things. And, as long -- and to me, as long as you label it and say that’s how these people viewed it and that’s their comments on it, it adds to it some funny things. And, people don’t know that history is worth preserving unless you tell them why it’s worth preserving or why it is worth knowing what happened 50 years ago, 100 years ago. Why is it important to know about the Osage Indians? Why is it important to know about the experience of African Americans? And, I try to bring some of that out in my book. It’s hard to do, but, it’s something, I think, more historians need to do, is to make it seem relevant to today. And, I have two images there. That’s the Visitor Center Museum, which was built in 1991, and the Christian Church from 1872.
Okay, next slide, I think.
So, this decision about whether a place like Arrow Rock and these other things, it’s going to be up to the people of Missouri. And, you know, it’s going to take commitment and support of the arts, education, and parks and soil sales tax for state parks and historic sites.
So, that’s the things that I’m trying to -- to bring out and, I think, it’s important in history to bring out. Why these things are worthy of preservation. And, that’s just kind of hodgepodge of things. The Lyceum Theatre, in the middle, one of the private residences, there in the snow, front of the old jail, sign at the entrance of town, a couple of the DAR ladies. The DAR ladies, I found sometimes, put out really bad history. But, bless their hearts, they took the first steps to get things set up. And so, you know, we built on what they did even though they made some serious, serious errors and kind of -- kind of juiced things up a little bit; still we were able to build on things that they started doing in 1912. And, then, probably if those little ladies hadn’t been there playing with that spinning wheel, I wouldn’t be here talking to you right now.
Questions and Answers
Okay, that wraps up my presentation. I guess if you have any quick questions.
Oh, yeah, there you go.
MALE SPEAKER: Over at the Capital Building, there’s a picture that shows Kit Carson meeting Washington Irving at Arrow Rock Tavern. I gather from your book that that never happened.
MR. MICHAEL DICKEY: No, that never happened, because the Arrow Rock Tavern was not in existence when those gentlemen would have passed through there. And, that’s one of the DAR bad history things. There was a big crack in the stoop there and one of the stories, and guides used to tell this up until the time that I came to work there, that they were -- had a barrel full of whiskey and were taking it out the front door of the tavern and they were so startled to see Washington Irving, that they dropped it and cracked the thing. Well, you know, in 1832, Washington Irving could’ve come out here-- well, he did come out here -- he could have walked up to anybody and said, I’m Washington Irving and -- and a good Missourian would say, so, you know. It just didn’t, you know, those things didn’t -- didn’t happen. We also know that Daniel Boone slept in the tavern and, of course, he had been dead for 13 years before it was built.
Yes, sir.
MALE SPEAKER: One of the slides you showed of the fort. Do you know where that fort was?
MR. MICHAEL DICKEY: Oh, that was Sibley’s Fort and, yeah, that was the Osage Trading House. There used to be a sign right in town that said this is where Sibley’s Fort stood and in research we figured out that it was actually about a mile north of town. And, two years ago, we did some in conjunction with the University of Missouri, St. Louis School of Archeology, we went out looking for the site and did some excavation out there. We found a few items that dated from that period, but nothing really conclusive. But, the Fort was a very temporary venture and we just don’t even think they put foundation --
MALE SPEAKER: Is there any chance that you can regain efforts to reconstruct it?
MR. MICHAEL DICKEY: The present landowner would be very much opposed to that.
MALE SPEAKER: That or the pigs.
MR. MICHAEL DICKEY: Yeah. I’ve had a lot of my colleagues in the War of 1812 and the things ask me the same thing. And, actually, that property is in a family estate and they couldn’t break it up. They’re not interested. The gentleman was kind enough to let us go out and look, but his son wasn’t happy about it.
Yes, John.
MALE SPEAKER: Were there any freed blacks (unintelligible) in Arrow Rock?
MR. MICHAEL DICKEY: You know I -- and that’s one thing in my research I never came out -- kept an eye out for it, but I never came up with anything about freed blacks. I’m not saying that there wasn’t. I’m just saying, I hadn’t discovered it, yet. But, again, see that just underscores the need for more research. Ah, more research.
Anything else?
Yes.
FEMALE SPEAKER: The special events you’re talking about. Are they just things like on a weekend or can someone go there anytime during the week?
MR. MICHAEL DICKEY: Most -- well, most of the events and I’ve got a little calendar of events, tour guide thing, and they’re listed in there. Most of the events, when there is something really extraordinary going on, those tend to be weekend things. If you come out during the week, the State Historic Site Visitor Center is open. We reduce our hours in the dead of winter, but, otherwise, we’re -- we’re always open. And, the rest of the businesses in town are privately owned and sometimes it’s, catch them if you can, during the week. But, you know, you can pick up one -- I brought some brochures that will give you more details.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Do they still have things for the children? About five years ago, my daughter is a teacher, and they had this wonderful day that they --
MR. MICHAEL DICKEY: Yes, we do that every two years, because it takes us that extra year to recover.
FEMALE SPEAKER: It was wonderful, though. The kids, you know, they showed us how to do laundry on a washboard.
MR. MICHAEL DICKEY: That’s right.
FEMALE SPEAKER: It was amazing. My kids, driving away from it that was just such a wonderful experience.
MR. MICHAEL DICKEY: Yes. And, John Cunning and I kill pumpkins.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Yes, I remember.
MR. MICHAEL DICKEY: Yeah, we’re the ones that kill the pumpkins. And, yeah, we do that every -- every other year. We tried -- in years past, we probably average about 2,000 school kids a year through our regular programs and then probably about close to that just for that one day Children’s Craft Festival. The attitude I have and stuff is that you got to get kids when they’re young, interested, and show them that history is not dull, dead, dry, boring facts. I mean, I can sit and read stuff all day that will make my wife, you know, she’ll go oh, my gosh, you know, and I can digest that fine. But, you know kids, you got to make it lively, entertain. You got to breathe some life into it. And, again, I say that’s why I put anecdotes. You know my mother read this book. My mother doesn’t -- never had a historic bone in her body or an interest. And, she read the book and she called me up and she goes, this was good. And, I said, well, thanks, Mom. And, she goes, no, I mean it. And, I said, well, why wouldn’t you think? She says, I don’t like history, she says. But, I really enjoyed reading that. And, so I felt good about that cause my -- if my mom didn’t like it, she would have told me she didn’t like it, you know.
But, I’ve really been surprised, because I -- in 2005, I was given the Governor’s Humanities Award for writing this book. And, then last year, the American Association of State and Local History gave me an Award of Merit for the book. And, I got to fly to Phoenix, Arizona to accept the award. So, I’ve really been surprised and I don’t mean to sound like I’m bragging, but I was just really flabbergasted that this is the first time I’ve written a book. And, of course, now I have another book coming out of this and it’s going to be about the Missouri Indian Tribe.
The Missouri Indians, for whom the river and our state took its name, nobody has ever written about them. I mean nobody. And, so, I foolishly have endeavored to start writing about them and get it published. And, I’ve talked to the University. Some folks at the University of Missouri Press about it, and, hopefully, I’ll have something come out within another year or two. I’ve been doing research for quite a bit. Oh, I don’t know a couple of years now on them. And, I have some contacts with the Otoe Missouri Tribe in Red Rock, Oklahoma. So, hopefully, I can get something going with that and we’ll have a first publication about that people that, you know, were an integral part of our history. And, have it be covered.
So, it’s been quite a phenomenal experience. I’m not quite up there with Ambrose, but I’m working on it.
Well, thank you for your time and attention. And, she has some books here for sale. If anybody’s interested, I’ll autograph it. And, like I said, all the proceeds go back to the Friends of Arrow Rock, and they use that for maintaining historic properties and putting on education programs for kids. So, thank you very much.