This Month in Missouri History

Two events tied to St. Louis high schools

A unique doctoral thesis written by a long-time Sumner High School science teacher was published in September, 1907, and construction of Soldan High School was completed in September, 1909.

Other September anniversary dates from Missouri's past included birth of famed Washington University chancellor Arthur H. Compton and completion of the first "post-house" residence in St. Louis in 1764.

One of the stirring anti-slavery speeches was given in St. Louis on the same day as the bloodiest single day death toll in U.S. war history at Antietam in Maryland.

(Each month, the Missouri History Museum researches items of historic interest that occurred in the state's history. Then, Young Saint Louis.com brings them to you for your enjoyment.

(To learn more about state history, visit www.mohistory.com.)

Scientist Charles Henry Turner's thesis

Charles Henry Turner

Charles Henry Turner of St. Louis was one of the first African-American researchers of animal behavior. And, for nearly 20 years, he was a teacher at Sumner High School, the first local high school to admit blacks.

His article in the September, 1907, edition of the Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology was based on his doctoral dissertation. It was titled: "The Homing of Ants: An Experimental Study of Ant Behavior."

There is an interesting website for kids on Turner. To view, visit: http://edhelper.com/ReadingComprehension_54_834.html.

For more about Turner, visit: http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/4485/
Turner-Charles-H-1867-1923.html#ixzz0OpRoNWhn
http://www.indiana.edu/~animal/Turner/WhoWasTurner.html.

For more on Sumner High School, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumner_High_School_%28St.
_Louis%29

Soldan High School's construction

Construction of Soldan High School in St. Louis was completed in September, 1909.

The high school became a magnet school for international studies in the 1930s.

For more about Soldan, visit: http://stlouis.missouri.org/neighborhoods/history/
cabanne/schools5.htm.

Arthur H. Compton

Arthur Holly Compton

Arthur Holly Compton, who went on to be chancellor of Washington University and is linked to construction of the first atomic bomb, was born on Sept. 10, 1892.

Dr. Compton was an American physicist and was named a Nobel Prize winner. He served as chancellor of Washington University from 1945 to 1953.

He is linked to the construction of the atomic bomb when he appointed Robert Oppenheimer as the top physicist to what became the Manhattan Project. That was the secret research project that invented the atomic bomb.

After A-bombs were dropped Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered unconditionally, thus ending World War II.

For more about Compton, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Compton.

First "post-house" residence in St. Louis

A post-in-ground constructed house in Ste. Genevieve, Missouir

The first "post-house" residence was completed in September, 1764, in what was then the French village of St. Louis.

It was located on a block once bounded by Market, Walnut, First and Second streets. That area is now a part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Park on the St. Louis riverfront.

French houses of that era were of three types of construction. But most common was the palisaded or vertical log construction. This was called "poteaux en terre" or post-in-ground construction.

To make the walls, a ditch was dug to the outer dimensions of the building. Then, logs were tipped upright into the ditches. Earth was then packed around the logs to anchor them. The earliest roofs were thatched.

At least two-thirds of the first St. Louis buildings were of this palisaded construction.

(The Missouri History Museum has an example of this style of building in its "Seeking St. Louis Currents Gallery" in the Forest Park facility.)

For more on this construction, visit http://www.stlgs.org/meetSIGFrench.aspx.

For more about the period, visit http://stlouis.missouri.org/heritage/History69/.

Antietam death toll and anti-slavery speech

Senator Charles Daniel Drake

On Sept. 17, 1862, there were two very different events that showed the turmoil that developed during the history of the United States of America.

On that date, U.S. Sen. Charles Daniel Drake delivered a rousing anti-slavery speech in St. Louis on the 75th anniversary of the completion of the U.S. Constitution.

Senator Drake cited the Constitution as an instrument that "has shed upon our country unnumbered blessings."

But, on that same date, the Civil War battle at Antietam, MD, recorded the bloodiest one-day death toll in U.S. history. An estimated 6,300 Union and Confederate soldiers were killed that day in the Battle of Antietam.

For other Drake speeches on the Union and anti-slavery, visit: http://books.google.com/books?id=5HQFAAAAQAAJ&pg=
PA173#v=onepage&q=&f=false.

For more about Senator Drake, visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_D._Drake

Mrs. Roosevelt notes St. Louis author

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt gave a plug on Sept. 16, 1936, to St. Louis author Martha Gellhorn's new book, "The Trouble I've Seen," in her nationally syndicated newspaper column, "My Day."

The wife of President F.D. Roosevelt told about giving a reading in Washington from the book at the Colony Club. At the start of the column, Mrs. Roosevelt bemoaned her decision to give the talk.

She asked herself, "Why had I ever been so conceited as to think I could read aloud to a group of really critical and erudite people?"

Martha Gellhorn

But, she said after she began to read, book's story "got to me just as it had the first time. Before I knew it, the first part was ended and it was seven-thirty."

Mrs. Roosevelt said she was very impressed with author Gellhorn's "understanding of many people and many situations in this country of ours."

Gellhorn was born in St. Louis in 1908 and had a noted career as a journalist. She was considered one of the greatest war correspondents in the 20th Century.

One of her assignments was to cover the Spanish Civil War, where she met novelist Ernest Hemingway. She became his second wife in 1940.

Lacking press credentials, Gellhorn impersonated a stretcher bearer in order to witness the D-Day invasion of Europe.

For quotes about Gellhorn, visit: http://216.93.184.240/kr/encyclopedia/Martha_Gellhorn/.