John Hogan’s Journey to America – Part 2: Liverpool to the Florida Keys

 Irish Wilderness, Lens & Pen Press, On the Mission and Fifty Years Ago, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Nov 092023
 

We left young John Hogan in Liverpool a week (and 175 years) ago. After his arrival from Dublin, he walked the docks and scanned the ships waiting for cargo and preparing to sail. There among them was the Forfarshire, on which he had already engaged his passage to New Orleans. The sight of it was a let-down:

She was a wide, large, dirty, heavy-looking ship. Her sails were anything but snow white, with plenty of pitch and tar splashed on her decks, bulwarks, and rigging; besides, she looked very deep in the water, and near her, on the wharf, there was a whole cargo yet waiting to be stowed in her between decks. I was greatly discouraged, and still more so when I had learned, upon inquiry; that the Forfarshire was a slow ship, her usual voyages between Liverpool and New Orleans being from seven to nine weeks.

Time to rethink that plan. He went to the office of the shipping line where he had his ticket and inquired (politely, of course) as to the possibility of changing his plan. Unlike today’s reservation system, they were amenable to the change (no change fees or separate charges) and recommended another of their ships:

“…the Berlin, an American clipper ship, commanded by Captain Smith, a Boston Yankee. The Berlin is a good ship and a fast sailor.”

This is a public domain image of a three masted clipper ship. I could not find an image of the Berlin itself.

Clipper ships were the sleek, fast, nimble ships of the era, plying the trade routes to China and India and the Americas. Pirates loved them too. They were three-masted vessels (though rarely four-masted) and were fully square-rigged on all masts. Speedy contemporary vessels with other sail plans, such as barques, were also sometimes called clippers. They dominated the seas in the middle third of the nineteenth century, before being phased out by the advent of more modern iron-hulled sailing ships, which eventually gave way to steamships.

Wikipedia has a long list of ships but the Berlin was not among them. Newspapers.com had no mention of the arrival of the Berlin in New Orleans that I could find. Nor did Hogan name the Boston company that owned the two ships. Better researchers than I could probably dig this information out!

Hogan does not mention how he passed his time in Liverpool for the week between the two launch dates, other than one activity, watching the Forfarshire up anchor and head to sea:

The Forfarshire sailed on her appointed day, November 1st. When I saw her leaving port, her dirty sails unloosed in the wind, I considered myself fortunate to be waiting for the Berlin.

John Hogan’s account of crossing the Atlantic is remarkable in its detail. Somewhere in the archives there may be a journal of his early years. It’s hard to imagine he could recall with such detail the days of passage, the sightings of land (the Azores, the Bahamas, weather and climate changes, the change in the night skies), the speed and course of the ship without some personal record. As they rounded the tip of the Florida peninsula, Hogan noted this: “The course we had sailed from Abaco to Key West … was about 300 miles. Time, from 6 P. M. Friday to 10 A. M. Monday, 40 hours; average sailing per hour, 7 ½ miles.”

In later years as Bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph, he published a small book, Nautical Distances and How to Compute Them for the Use of Schools, dedicated to Teddy Roosevelt. It is a small book, a copy of which is in the archives of the diocese. Interestingly, amazon.com has a listing for this book (published 120 years ago – 1903)…  currently listed as unavailable.

At this point, he was one month from Liverpool and nearing New Orleans, his first destination.

 

 

 

Bishop Hogan recounted his childhood memories and his voyage to America and to the priesthood in Fifty Years Ago: A Memoir, written in 1898 and published in 1907.  Our companion volume to Mystery of the Irish Wilderness contains both those memoirs plus additional biographical information I was able to learn from the archives of both the Kansas City-St. Joseph and St. Louis dioceses.

On the Mission in Missouri and Fifty Years Ago: A Memoir is available on our website for $10.50, postage paid at www.beautifulozarks.com    Companion volume, Mystery of the Irish Wilderness: Land and Legend of Father John Joseph Hogan’s Lost Irish Colony in the Ozark Wilderness, is also available for $9.50, postpaid.

CAN YOU TOP THESE? Moving ads for Lake of the Ozarks Recreation

 Lens & Pen Press, See The Ozarks, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Nov 012023
 

Painted aluminum license plate topper, 1940s. Aluminum replaced steel in almost everything due to the World War 2 war effort. As aluminum didn’t rust it continued to be used post war. Below it is a less detailed image of the icon of Lake of the Ozarks, Bagnell Dam. Painted steel. Possibly in the late 1930s.

When Americans took to the highways for family vacations, license plate toppers were affixed to their automobile’s back plate. They advertised a place or business. A few identified the vehicle owner’s profession. They were in vogue before cars were required to have two plates and before automobile designs that don’t have space around the plate for the advertising message. Most are from the 1930s to 1980s. Occasionally one sees a descendant of the topper—a license plate holder advertising a sports team, car dealer, or organization. Bumper stickers advertising “Cowboy Bob’s Reptile Ranch” were a topper’s low-class relative slapped on by a teenage lad as you gawked at diamondbacks as fat as a truck tire.

The motif of license toppers of tourist regions, like souvenirs, usually conveyed what was thought to attract visitors or sometimes dramatic architecture or an unusual landscape feature. When Bagnell Dam closed in 1931, Union Electric of St. Louis, its builder, was bursting with pride about the multi-million-dollar hydroelectric project which backed up the Osage River creating 1,100 miles of shoreline. Images of this marvel of modern technology became the region’s icon. Union Electric would be forced to sell these developable properties before a tourism boom. While the public did take tours of the powerhouse, it doesn’t seem likely that very many planned their vacation around witnessing the creation of electricity from running water.

Lazy Days Resort, Lake of the Ozarks license plate topper, marked Vernon Co. Newton, IA. Possibly 1950s. “Fishin’s good” (below) Lake of the Ozarks license plate topper. 1950s? Its graphic style is reminiscent of Jazz Age cartoonist John Held Jr. but there weren’t many promotional artifacts from Lake of the Ozarks during Held’s heyday. No specific business is promoted so it’s unclear what its origins were.

Lake of the Ozarks tourist advertising rarely featured any version of the indigenous population compared to Branson and the Shepherd of the Hills country. This reclining country bumpkin is not accessorized with a jug of corn whiskey or a floppy eared hound. He’s rural, but not a stereotypical hillbilly.

The Vernon Company is still going strong. Founded in 1902, today they employ 500 people producing products branded for promotion. Through the years their design work has been eye-catching. One of their 1950s license toppers of a roller-skating girl with “God Bless America” advertises a Philadelphia Roller Rink. It was on eBay for $395.

Lake of the Ozarks attractions have always been somewhat generic compared to Branson’s specifically regional reasons to visit—float fishing, country music, and frontier history theme parks. Branson’s symbol was Old Matt’s Cabin, domicile of the god-fearing hill folk in Harold Bell Wright’s romantic The Shepherd of the Hills. This bestseller identified the upper White River Hills as a region that had preserved old time ways. Curiously, we’re not aware of license plate toppers with a log cabin or any representation of the anachronistic culture of the place. The two tourist venues have very different beginnings and pitches to vacationers with different promotional strategies.

Our 5,000-piece collection of Ozark memorabilia and souvenirs contains license plate toppers from Lake of the Ozarks but none from Branson. The collection is now owned by Missouri State University Libraries-Ozarks Studies Institute.

Lazy Days Resort seems to have gone out of business around the year 2000. There is a Lazy Dayz Resort and RV Park at Lake of the Ozarks which opened three years ago. Their advertising used a man sipping a drink in a hammock. The reclining hillbilly of the Lazy Days license plate topper has evolved into a lazy tourist.

 

Most Lens & Pen titles are on sale on our website for half price, postage paid.  See the Ozarks: The Touristic Image, where you can find many more examples of this contrasting branding, is now $12.50, postage paid.

COMPETING OZARK TOURISM ICONS: Old Matt’s Cabin vs. Bagnell Dam

 Lens & Pen Press, See The Ozarks  No Responses »
Oct 292023
 

The two biggest tourist centers of the Ozarks are Branson and Lake of the Ozarks. While graphics used to promote travel do not necessarily accurately or honestly represent those places, they can betray the character and history of places. Such is the case with the imagery used to advertise and decorate souvenirs of these two attractions.

Souvenirs from the Shepherd of the Hills Country (Branson). Its dominant motif is Old Matt’s Cabin from Harold Bell Wright’s “The Shepherd of the Hills.” Tourism and recreation were not add-ons to a dam and reservoir project here. They long preceded the building of artificial reservoirs and featured fishing and outdoor recreation with the bucolic locals playing a role.

Branson, near the Missouri-Arkansas line in southwest Missouri, began attracting travelers in the early 190s. Harold Bell Wright’s bucolic novel, Shepherd of the Hills, drew attention to the upper White River hills and their rustic inhabitants. Wright portrayed the inhabitants as colorful primitives and locals claimed to be the inspiration for various characters. The Ross house, known as Old Matt’s Cabin, became a symbol of for the area. It decorated brochures and gifts communicating that a vacation in the Shepherd of the Hills country was trip to the trouble-free past.

Lake of the Ozarks, on the northern flank of the Ozarks was created in 1931 by the closing of Bagnell Dam. This blockage of the Osage River was built by Union Electric (now AmerenUE) to supply electricity. Lacking any comparable settler mythos, pictures of the dam represented the new lake. This wonder of technology was plastered on tourist promotions and souvenirs. From the beginning, its recreational attractions have been hedonistic pleasure, boating, and fishing in the 54,000-acre reservoir. Perhaps the difficulty of picturing the artificial lake led to the inappropriate use of an industrial structure.

 

 

 

 

Lake of the Ozarks souvenirs feature Bagnell Dam, which created the reservoir for hydro-electric power, not recreation or flood control.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most Lens & Pen titles are on sale on our website for half price, postage paid.  See the Ozarks: The Touristic Image, where you can find many more examples of this contrasting branding, is now $12.50, postage paid.

 

John Joseph Hogan’s Missionary Life Begins – 175 years ago

 Irish Wilderness, On the Mission and Fifty Years Ago, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Oct 252023
 

One hundred seventy-five (175) years ago today, October 24, 1848, John Joseph Hogan, age 19, departed from his family home in Cahirguillamore, County Limerick, to travel to St. Louis to study for the priesthood. Not the traditional path to holy order perhaps, but his chosen path to fulfill his desire to become a missionary on the plains of the still-new country in America.

Young John Hogan was the eighth of nine children of James Hogan and Ellen Connor.

My father, though educated for a profession, had the good sense to confine his ambition to the safer and less contentious way of living as a farmer of land and a dealer in cattle and crops; and besides, the penal laws, then in force in Ireland, debarred Catholics from the learned professions and from Government office, unless upon recusancy of their faith, which, in my father’s case, was an insuperable objection.

His education and background set him on a path to holy orders.  But unlike one of his brothers who studied for the priesthood in Rome, Hogan dreamed of being a missionary to those who had not before heard of Jesus Christ. To this end, he determined that the place most suited for him was the plains of North America.

MY MIND MADE UP

I had learned from many reliable sources of information that in the far-away Western World, on the banks of the Mississippi, a great diocese was growing up that had immense missionary fields, over which the Church was spreading rapidly. One of my sources of information, the American Catholic Almanac, sent regularly every year to my father by his brother, my uncle and namesake in America, gave full description of the diocese of St. Louis and had a well-executed frontispiece engraving of the Cathedral of St. Louis and buildings adjoining it, so that I had become greatly familiar with the place.

Priests were not needed in Ireland, where for every vacancy there were twenty or more applicants. In the St. Louis diocese it occurred to me that possibly there might be more vacancies than applicants, as it was a new country. Why not go where, as it was reasonable to suppose, “the harvest was great, and the laborers few”? Besides, I preferred going where few had gone before me and where new paths had to be opened. Of “perils of rivers” or of “perils of the wilderness,” I was not afraid. St. Louis was, as I regarded it, my foreordained place. I made up my mind to go there. This conclusion was reached by me on Thursday, the 9th day of October, 1848. I sought an interview with my father and informed him of my purpose and of the reasons that led me thereto.

He unhesitatingly gave me his necessary permission to depart and that I might begin at once to make preparations for the journey

Travel in 1848 was a more arduous exercise than today (although holiday travelers with cancelled and delayed flights or families in cars stuck in traffic might argue that point). But Hogan’s journey started with a full day of riding and consulting with shipping agents to determine his itinerary.

The next day I rode twelve miles to Limerick to consult the shipping agents as to the best way to go to St. Louis. The shipping agents informed me that, as the American railways had been built only as far west as the western boundaries of New York and Pennsylvania, the journey thence westward to St. Louis, about 1,000 miles, was too great to be attempted by uncertain ways, such as stagecoaches and sailing on lakes and rivers, especially as the cold, freezing weather of winter was about to set in.

They advised that I sail from Liverpool to New Orleans and take steamboat from New Orleans to St. Louis, which I might possibly reach in the early part of winter, should the Mississippi River be then free from ice, as they thought it might be, on account of its more southern latitude than that of the northern lakes and rivers. Accordingly, I engaged passage from Liverpool to New Orleans on the first ship sailing on that voyage that I could reach, which was the Forfarshire, advertised to sail on Wednesday, November 1st, the intervening eleven days being sufficient for my preparation and the journey to Liverpool. On that same day that I went to Limerick, Friday, October 20th, I returned to my home at Cahirguillamore and announced my purpose to finally leave home on the following Tuesday, October 24th, feast of St. Raphael Archangel.

Archangel Raphael with Bishop Domonte. Painting by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617–1682). Wikimedia commons

In the Old Testament book of Tobit, a faithful and wealthy Israelite living in Nineveh, suffers reverses and is blinded. He sends his son, Tobiah to retrieve money he has left in a place several days’ journey from his home. But Tobiah is young and unfamiliar with travel. They engage a guide, who is the Archangel Raphael in the guise of “an Israelite, one of your kinsmen” who says his name is Azariah (“Yahweh helps”). The Old Testament story of course is detailed, intricate and enlightening. From this singular event, the Archangel Raphael has been considered a protector of travelers. A fortuitous date for the commencement of Hogan’s life.

Departure day arrived and young Hogan rose at 4 a.m. After sad adieus he traveled to Limerick:

I reached Limerick in less than two hours, and was at the railway station on time for the departure of the morning train for Dublin. The train went out on the Limerick and Waterford Railway as far as the Limerick Junction and there turned northward on the tracks of the Great Southern and Western Railway for Dublin.

Arrived at Dublin in the evening, I straightway proceeded from King’s Bridge terminus by the Liffey along the quays past the Custom House to the North Wall, where I found the steamship Royal William with steam up bound for Liverpool. The Royal William, then one of the fastest steamers afloat, made the voyage from her Dublin pier to her pier in Liverpool in ten and a half hours.

The first leg of his journey was accomplished in little more than 24 hours. From Liverpool, his sites were set on New Orleans, Louisiana …. far across the Atlantic.

 

On the Mission in Missouri and Fifty Years Ago: A Memoir is available on our website for $10.50, postage paid at www.beautifulozarks.com,   Companion volume, Mystery of the Irish Wilderness: Land and Legend of Father John Joseph Hogan’s Lost Irish Colony in the Ozark Wilderness, is also available for $9.50, postpaid.

 

Springfield “a Gem of a City”

 James Fork of the White, Lens & Pen Press, See The Ozarks  No Responses »
Oct 222023
 

John T. Woodruff and the Chamber of Commerce had encouraged private companies in the 1920s and ’30s to harness the hydropower from Ozark streams. When they didn’t and the Army Corps of Engineers embarked on their massive White River multi-purpose dam campaign, Woodruff and packs of Springfield leaders traveled to Washington, DC, to testify before Congress on behalf of these projects.

An anonymous letter to the editor in the October 31, 1925, Springfield Leader captures the mystical association dams, roads, and prosperity had for that era’s believers in progress. Springfield, the author implies, should become the Queen City of Ozark water resource development. Transforming the free-flowing streams into reservoirs, along with “excellent highways,” would make the town a “fountainhead” of wealth:

“Springfield is the nipple on the breast of the Ozarks. Within the circumference of this Ozarkian breast are more stupendous hydro-electric projects than in any same area in America. No less than six enormous projects, involving $200,000,000! … Not dreams, but projects as sure to be developed as water runs down hill, and its running may be changed into gold. Why Florida is a piker compared to our Ozarks. And these enormous dams will empound vast inland lakes, converting the Ozarks into a wonderland for the tourists developing hotels and pleasure resorts rivaling the dreams of Florida. Now consider our excellent highways, draining like milk ducts, the wealth and patronage of these marvelous Ozarks into Springfield, its fountain’s head. Will Springfield grow? We guess yes.”

Taken from James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River, now on sale for $17.50 (half price) postage paid, at www.beautifulozarks.com

 

A True Ozark Icon: the Hillbilly

 Beautiful Ozarks, James Fork of the White, Lens & Pen Press, See The Ozarks  No Responses »
Oct 172023
 

Controversy over viewing the Ozarks as a refuge of degenerate primitives has a long history. This symbol of profound rusticity upset promoters and businessmen like John Woodruff but defenders of the premodern Ozarks rushed to defend even the stereotypical hillbilly. On March 27, 1934, The Springfield Leader and Press reprinted highlights of the disastrous meeting of the Springfield Folk Festival advisory committee with Chamber of Commerce leadership. Replying to accusations that they were “advertising to the world that we are ignorant”:

“We are not trying to present freaks or ignoramuses,” the honorable district chairman said. “We are just trying to preserve some of the old, lovely, beautiful, wonderful things that went into the making of the country. I am not ashamed of some of the things my parents did.” “Of course, it does not have to be rough, rowdy, and hoedownish,” the Springfield city chairman said. “Oh, yes it does,” put another leader. “It wouldn’t be the Ozarks if it didn’t.” “You mean we’re not going to have hill billies with beards?”

Taken from James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River, now on sale for $17.50 (half price) postage paid, at www.beautifulozarks.com

 

BALANCING THE HILLBILLY AND PROGRESSIVE OZARKS: The saga of a forthright newspaperwoman

 James Fork of the White, Lens & Pen Press, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Oct 052023
 

Like the pioneer newspaperwoman’s prose, this is well researched and very readable. It’s in the Ozarks Studies Series, edited by Prof. Brooks Blevins. It is footnoted and indexed but does not have an academic tone. The author credits Dr. Blevins encouragement and acknowledges Lynn Morrow for “setting me straight innumerable times.” Morrow also knew and admired Lucile. Newspaperwoman of the Ozarks: The Life and Times of Lucile Morris Upton. Susan Croce Kelly. University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville. 2023.

by Leland Payton

The Life and Times of Lucile Morris Upton reads the subtitle of Newspaperwoman of the Ozarks, a new book by Susan Croce Kelly. The author knew the pioneering woman journalist. Lucile was her great aunt. It’s much more than a genealogical tribute, though, familiarity with her “bookish family” and small-town background gave insight into Lucille’s rare ability to champion modern technology and at the same time accept the unenlightened behavior of the legendary Ozark hill folk.

Way back when someone was bitten by a dog suspected of having rabies, they would borrow the Morris family’s “madstone”—a small, calcified object found in the gut of a white deer. Backwoods folk believed when this rare object was soaked in warm milk it would draw the “pi-zen” out of the wound. Her literate family knew better but they played along with the superstition. Decades later, when the Springfield business community lit into “hillbilliness” she supported a folk festival which celebrated the old-time ways in her column. The belief Ozark hills and hollows sheltered communities living like our ancestors made good copy and attracted tourists.

Lucile Morris not only wrote hundreds of features covering the atavistic Ozarks, but she also wrote a column for the Springfield News and Leader, “Over the Ozarks,” inviting readers to submit folk songs, legends, and poems. This recognition of the vernacular gave her a large following.

As a child she was enthralled by old timers’ tales of the Civil War and its turbulent aftermath. An outbreak of unsettled scores in the region was covered nationally. Lucile is best known today for her study of the Baldknobbers, the Ozarks’ bloodthirsty post-Civil War vigilantes.

All aspects of the past interested her. The fact that the home of Daniel Boone’s son, Nathan, is a state park and Wilson’s Creek Civil War Battlefield was incorporated into the National Park System is due in large part to her persistent advocacy for their preservation.

Journalists today are often accused of political bias and advocacy in their reporting. Lucile Upton distanced herself from politics or social movements. Susan Kelly notes that although women were once discouraged as newspaper reporters, she was not an active feminist. That her family were all Democrats in a Republican stronghold perhaps made her wary of partisanship. She acknowledged issues had two sides and vigorously pursued objectivity and fairness.

The writer of this biography shares this interest in stories that connect the past with the present. Susan Croce Kelly was once, like Lucile, employed as a reporter by the Springfield News-Leader.  Her book Father of Route 66: The Story of Cy Avery was praised for connecting its subject’s personality and the times in which he lived. That gift of portraying people against a historical backdrop connects the two related writers.

Lucile Morris Upton grasped that the hillbilly was derived from observations of authentic Ozark folk culture. If a pop culture cliché, she didn’t blame the cartoonist, Hollywood, or the media for exploiting this rustic’s popularity. “The public, however, is entitled to know the difference between the genuine and the synthetic,” she believed.

Bald Knobbers, published by Claxton Printers, Caldwell, Idaho. 1939, is a stirring account of vigilante violence in the aftermath of the Civil War. This first edition with graphic dust jacket can go for hundreds of dollars. Lucile interviewed old timers with memories of the night riders who terrorized the White River hills until three Bald Knobbers were hung on the courthouse square in Ozark Missouri in 1889.

Her well-researched book on the Baldknobbers was the first to cover the violent post-Civil War Ozark vigilante. Since that time, numerous accounts have been published, both fiction and nonfiction. Hollywood was interested in making her version into a movie, but World War II redirected their priorities. A recent locally produced movie has been released on DVD. A well-known musical group, The Baldknobbers, have entertained Branson visitors for 60 years.

Lucile worked for years on two unpublished novels. Her characters and locations were praised by editors, but they thought the plots lacked excitement. This is surprising given her vivid account of post-Civil War violence.

On Sept. 7, 2023 Susan Croce Kelly gave a lecture on her new book at the Springfield-Greene County library Center. it was a cut-to-the -chase presentation. Kelly, like her great aunt Lucile Upton, been a journalist of the old school—terse, factual prose without an agenda.

As a native, Lucile had a feeling for the landscape and the people who settled it. She didn’t always share their attachment to primitive ways, but she understood it was a component of their identity.  She disagreed with the modernist, progressive beliefs of Springfield Chamber of Commerce president, John T. Woodruff who underestimated the commerciality of hillbilly-ness as a tourist draw.

Through the many years as a News-Leader reporter, she produced countless features covering every aspect of Ozark folk culture. She covered Thomas Hart Benton, the Herschends, Rose Wilder Lane, the Lynches, Rose O’Neill, Otto Earnest Rayburn, and Harold Bell Wright. She reviewed Vance Randolph’s books but they had an “on again, off again” relationship as Susan Kelly put it.

 

 

                                     Susan Croce Kelly signs a book for
Crystal Payton after her Springfield Library talk.

 

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Chamber of Commerce President Incensed by Violent Obscene Novel of the Ozark Hills

 James Fork of the White, See The Ozarks  No Responses »
Sep 252023
 

“Mountain Music Lovers On March To Springfield; Chamber of Commerce Looks Askance at Hill Billy Antics; Old Fiddlers Will Torture Ears of Progressive Ozark City,” read a headline from The Jefferson City Post-Tribune:

“The new broadside was fired by John T. Woodruff, president of the Chamber, who told sponsors of the Ozarks folk festival across the table last night that writers on Ozarkian subjects are “a lot of carpetbaggers” and that Harold Bell Wright, who first “touted the Ozarks hardly knew a thing about them and held up the class of citizenship at the foot of the ladder.” He said that Vance Randolph, Ozark author who was present, had been “consorting with some of the undercrust and took them as typical.”

And he added he wondered why “the woods colt” [sic], a recent Ozarks novel by Thames Williamson had not been suppressed. “The Ozarkians,” said Woodruff, “are a lovable people. Never get the idea that they are uncouth, illiterate and mean – the real Ozarkian is high-minded, patriotic and God fearing and he made here a near perfect a civilization as it is possible to make in a wilderness.”

The Springfield Leader and Press covered the banquet as well. “The worst thing about Vance,” said Woodruff, “is his association with the author of ‘The Wood’s Colt.’” That novel was described in Kirkus Review as “a story of the Ozarks, with the seemingly unavoidable component parts: bootleggers, moonshiners, revenue officers, sheriffs, blood feuds, the hero of the piece, and the villain.” Vance Randolph had gone over the dialect for authenticity, and Williamson dedicated the book to him. Time magazine thought it deserved a Pulitzer. The author of the book that Woodruff thought “should be suppressed” wasn’t present, but Randolph was.

McCord leapt to his defense. “Vance Randolph is the greatest authority on the Ozarks living today.” Eureka Springs Chamber of Commerce president praised Woodruff for his “pioneering in the way of better roads” but said he was indebted to Randolph for his interest in things Ozarkian.

Vance refused to comment. “Mr. Ozark” had signed on to be a judge largely because he found Sarah Gertrude Knott fetching.

 

Taken from James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River, now on sale for $17.50 (half price) postage paid, at www.beautifulozarks.com

 

Paul Holland, “Hillbilly Artist” of Springfield

 Beautiful Ozarks, James Fork of the White, Lens & Pen Press, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Sep 172023
 

These attractive maps promoting rusticated leisure near Springfield were designed by Paul Holland.

Paul Holland was the owner of Holland Engraving Company and a weekend painter active in the Ozarks’ Artists Guild in the 1930s. Holland was a lifelong defender of the Ozarks as a fit subject for art. “Ozarks Treat Artists Better” read the title of a July 25, 1930 Springfield Leader article about Holland’s misadventures going back east to paint that landscape. Not only was he unimpressed by the art he viewed, but he also found the landowners inhospitable:

After a three-week survey of the situation, Paul Holland, “hillbilly artist” and leader in the Ozarks Artists Guild, has returned from a tour through New England and southeastern Canada more convinced than ever that the Ozarks offers to artists “all the advantages and none of the disadvantages” of the east. “‘The natives,’ he said, ‘seem averse to having sketchers on their land, and even the docks, and virtually all homes are posted ‘no trespassing.’”

This painting and five others by Paul Holland, as  well as the maps, from our collection are now with Missouri State Libraries-Ozark Studies Institute. Read more about the collection here

Oil painting by Paul Holland titled “Ozark Village.” View of Branson’s downtown from Presbyterian Hill across Lake Taneycomo.

 

Woodruff Believed Springfield’s 1934 Folk Festival was “a lot of freaks”

 James Fork of the White, See The Ozarks, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Sep 122023
 

 

 The committee for the first Springfield Folk Festival, held in 1933. Vance Randolph is third from left, and Sarah Gertrude Knott, the woman he was attracted to, is on the far right. Bascom Lamar Lunsford, who also fancied Miss Knott, is the gent with the bow tie. May Kennedy McCord is fifth from the left.

In the spring of 1934, the Springfield Chamber of Commerce was presented with a very different opportunity to celebrate the Ozarks Empire. May Kennedy McCord, of KWTO’s radio show “Hillbilly Heartbeats,” was on the advisory committee for the upcoming First National Folk Festival to be held in St. Louis, Missouri, beginning April 29. Folk-play and folk-dance enthusiast Sarah Gertrude Knott conceived of that four-day event. Banjo-playing, bowtie-wearing, ballad-singing Bascom Lamar Lunsford, “Minstrel of the Appalachians,” assisted her. The St. Louis Chamber of Commerce enthusiastically backed the venture. Leading up to the main event, contests at smaller festivals would decide who would take the stage in St. Louis to fiddle, yodel, or clog. McCord’s friend Vance Randolph was asked to be one of the judges. She asked if the local committee could meet in late March with the Chamber to solicit support for a Springfield venue.

That meeting did not go well. A blow-by-blow account appeared in The Pittsburgh (Kansas) Headlight of March 22, 1934. On March 27, the Springfield Leader and Press reprinted highlights from it entitled, “The Ozarks and Culture.” “A lot of freaks should not be selected to go to the national festival,” John T. Woodruff, a Chamber official told the shocked group. “Why call back the things we’ve been trying to forget for fifty years? Why advertise to the world that we are ignorant?”

Taken from James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River, now on sale for $17.50 (half price) postage paid, at www.beautifulozarks.com

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