FREDERICKSBURG MILITARY BAND, CIRCA 1915

 Beautiful Ozarks, Lens & Pen Press, See The Ozarks  No Responses »
May 212025
 

The decorative cardboard mat has the embossed name Schuster Studio, Hermann, Mo. Martin Anthony Schuster was born in 1871, was a veteran of the Spanish-American War, and a widely known photographer in the Hermann area. He opened a studio there on Schiller St. in 1910. The first ad we could find for the studio noted that as well as portraiture, they offered film development and printing.

How does a marching brass band cross an unbridged Ozark river? On a cable-driven ferry, of course. This sharp focus cabinet photograph preserves the record of a lost musical tradition and a vanished transportation technology. In its entry about Fredericksburg, the Gasconade Historical Society documents the population of the tiny village in 1879 population at 40. It likely never much exceeded that.

Throughout much of the 20th century the ferry permitted crossing that bridgeless section of the Gasconade River. Originally the little barge was propelled by oars, then a cable system was followed by an outboard motor, and finally an electric motor. In the mid-20th century, a bridge at last rendered it obsolete. Both the ferry and the band survived long after their prime.

The brass band posed on the ferry was organized in 1902. An ad in the May 29, 1953, Advertiser-Courier of Hermann Missouri announced an upcoming performance:

Ice Cream

SOCIAL

St. Peter’s E. & R. Church

Fredericksburg, Mo.

Saturday, June 6,

6 p.m.

Sandwiches and Refreshments

Music by Fredericksburg Military Band

Welcome Everybody

Following the Fredericksburg band promo was the announcement that music by the Charlotte Cornet Band (an even smaller community than Fredericksburg) would be provided for an ice cream social at the Salem Presby Church at Holt, Mo. That the northeast corner of the Ozarks was heavily settled by German immigrants explains how a tiny village could supply five trombone players, four cornet players and several other wind instruments. Most Ozark highland pioneers were of Scots Irish heritage and favored stringed instruments and the ballad tradition of the British Isles.

Vintage Images is a column we provide to the monthly publication, River Hills Traveler. This photograph, along with hundreds more, are among our collection now housed at Missouri State University Libraries-Ozarks Studies Institute.

Portuguese Point on the Gasconade River

 Beautiful Ozarks, See The Ozarks, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jul 072020
 

Real photo postcard, 1930s. Written on the postcard, “Looking down on Gasconade River from Portuguese Point. S-243.” Inevitably, photographs of the panoramic landscape contain a figure poised at the edge of the cliff.

There is a bluff called Portuguese Point overlooking the Gasconade River valley about eleven miles south of Dixon, Missouri. It has a splendid view, is easily reached, and photographers and artists, professional and amateur alike, exploit its graphic opportunities. The mystery is, what were the Portuguese doing in the Ozarks? We found a credible explanation in the KJPW’s Old Settlers Gazette, July 26, 1997, in an article by Gary Knehans. Apparently, John Anderson Smith immigrated to the Ozarks in 1858 and ended up in a fertile valley in a bend in the Gasconade. The pioneer had Cherokee blood and apparently, he and his children had Native American features. Fearing prejudice against Indians, he told his neighbors he was of Portuguese ancestry. Smith had a colorful life. Bushwhackers hung him but he survived somehow to die of dropsy in 1922. As he had voted twice for Henry Clay for President, his age was variously calculated at 110 or 116 years old. The article doesn’t cite any references but it’s an interesting and credible explanation.

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Lover’s Leap Legends won the bronze medal in the popular culture division of the 2020 Independent Publishers’ Book Awards, an international competition. This year there were entries from forty-four states, seven Canadian provinces and fifteen other countries.

James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River was a finalist in Regional Non-fiction in the 2019 Indie Book Awards. Lens & Pen Press’s earlier river book, Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir, was awarded a silver medal by the Independent Publishers’ Book Awards in 2013.)