In 1905, famed Missourian and horse trainer, Tom Bass, orchestrated a horse show to raise funds for Kansas City fire authorities. The show was such a success that it was incorporated into the American Royal season and is still going on today; where many a blue ribbon, belt buckle and silver cup are granted to equestrians, rodeoers, livestock exhibitioners and bar-b-quers alike. But this is only part of the legacy of Tom Bass. 

Tom Bass was born in January 1859 on the Bass farm in Boone County, Mo. As a young child, Bass was seen to have a way with animals. Emancipated at age six, Tom was raised by his former slave grandparents and stayed on at the Bass farm until the age of 20. At this time, he and his brother Jesse went to work at the Ringo Hotel in Mexico, Mo. But soon, Tom found himself employed as a horse trainer by Joseph Potts at Potts & Clark. And from then on, Bass was the man to seek and a "Tom Bass-trained" horse was the horse to have . He trained equine legends Rex McDonald, Miss Rex and Belle Beach (below with Bass). His abilities and reputation for fair and honest dealings even permeated into the world of dignitaries and celebrities. He was visited by Presidents McKinley, T. Roosevelt and Taft, and rode in the inaugural parades for Cleveland and Coolidge. Buffalo Bill Cody with a young Will Rogers, Adolphus and August Busch, P.T. Barnum, Queen Marie of Hungary and others also sought Bass out.

Known for his gentle training methods, Bass designed a bit which helped prevent mouth injuries to horses during training. When shown the new bit, Potts remarked to Bass "That's an invention." Bass, who never had a head for money, responded, "I love horses. I don't want to make money off this bit. I want to give it to the horses of the world; something to make their way in life a little easier." The "Bass bit" is still considered standard tack in stables today.

Bass died on November 20, 1934, in Mexico, Mo; now known as the "Saddle Horse Capital of the World."

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For more on Bass, check out our titles: Tom Bass, Black horseman, Marking Missouri history, and Forgotten Missourians who made history. Or check out books and media from the MOBIUS lending catalog.

The Heart of the Saddle Horse Story in Missouri

See a bust of Tom Bass in the Hall of Famous Missourians (inducted 4/12/1999).

Learn more about the American Royal.

Visit our Missouri Bicentennial guide for more on famous Missourians and Missouri history.

In the 'Little House in the Big Woods,' Laura Ingalls was born outside of Pepin, Wisconsin on February 7, 1867. The second of five children, the Ingalls lived a pioneering life in the frontier West. Precipitated by plagues of locusts, blizzards and the general hardscrabble life of farming, Laura's childhood saw the family move to the Osage Indian Reserve in Kansas; Walnut Grove, Minnesota; Burr Oak, Iowa; and finally, DeSmet, South Dakota. In DeSmet, Laura cared for her now blind sister, Mary; attended high school, and started her first teaching job. Neighbor Almanzo Wilder gave her buggy rides to and from the school. Later the two would marry. In 1886, their daughter Rose was born and the next several years saw the young couple suffering hail damaged crops, fires, diphtheria, drought, and the loss of their infant son. They sought success elsewhere and eventually travelled to Missouri.

In 1894, Almanzo and Laura moved to Rocky Ridge Farm, near Mansfield, Mo. They quickly earned reputations for their farming skills; and through their farming occupation, Laura got started in writing. Using the byline Mrs. A. J. Wilder, her first paid writing job was as the poultry columnist for the St. Louis Star Farmer. And between 1911-1931, she wrote articles about farm life for the Missouri Ruralist. In later magazines she wrote under A. J. Wilder to give her work more credibility among male readers. When the stock market crashed in 1929, the Wilders lost most of their life savings. In order to help supplement the farm, Laura wrote an autobiography. However, that autobiography was never published. Instead, she took the advice of the reviewing publishers and with the help of her journalist daughter (Rose Wilder Lane), rewrote it as fiction. Her famous Little House series was born out of the retelling of her pioneering childhood experiences as historical fiction. The series made Laura Ingalls Wilder one of the most influential children's authors in American history.

The Wilders lived out the rest of their lives on Rocky Ridge Farm. Almanzo died at the age of 92 on October 23, 1949, and Laura died three days shy of her 90th birthday on February 10, 1957. Television and stage adaptations have been made of the Little House series. Most famously, the 1974-1983 TV series, Little House on the Prairie, starring Michael Landon as Charles 'Pa' Ingalls and Melissa Gilbert as Laura.

Visit the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Home & Museum in Mansfield, Mo.

See a bust of Laura Ingalls Wilder (inducted 9/15/1993) in the Hall of Famous Missourians.

For more on Wilder and her Little House series, check out titles from our collection, or request books and media from the MOBIUS lending catalog.

Visit our Missouri Bicentennial guide for more on famous Missourians and Missouri history.

Geology and Soils:

Curtis Fletcher Marbut (pictured left) was born on July 19, 1863 and grew up on his family’s farm in Barry County, Mo. Interested in the natural world, Marbut studied geology at the University of Missouri and after graduation, worked as a field geologist for the Missouri State Geological Survey. In 1893, Marbut attended Harvard University and completed his master’s degree in geology. Returning to the University of Missouri, Marbut performed duties as a professor and served as the director of the Soil Survey of Missouri. After the passing of his wife in 1909, he joined the U.S. Bureau of Soils and served as Chief of the Soil Survey Division from 1913 until his death in August 1935, at the age of 72. He was the first to introduce a formal system of soil classification in the U.S. His reputation as a pioneering soil scientist was worldwide and he worked closely with experts from many countries to develop international classification systems for soil materials.  The American Geographical Society awarded him the Cullum Medal, its highest distinction, in 1932, “For geographical works on the study of soils – the foothold of all things.”

Indiana-raised, Mark Baldwin (pictured right), entered work as a Soil Survey Inspector for the Bureau of Soils in 1912 until his retirement in 1944. Baldwin worked under Marbut for almost his entire career. In 1917, Baldwin and a few other men from the Soil Survey responded to the call for volunteers to train as pilots and observers in the Signal Corps. After they were decommissioned, Baldwin and T. M. Bushnell took what they had learned from "up in the air" and were the first to experimentally apply aerial photography to soil mapping. In the early 1920s, Baldwin mapped the boundary waters of Minnesota and Northern Wisconsin. His wife Mary was most likely the first woman to participate in American soil survey field work. As she accompanied her husband, she made and transcribed field notes while also assisted Mark with sampling.  For a time the Baldwin’s lived in Missouri and Mary taught soil science at the University of Missouri.

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For more on Marbut, check out our title: Life and work of C. F. Marbut : soil scientist, professor of geology, 1895-1910. Or check out books and media from the MOBIUS lending catalog.

Soil Reconnoissance of the Ozark Region of Missouri and Arkansas by Curtis F. Marbut

Curtis Fletcher Marbut Papers (SHSMO finding aid)

The Use of Aerial Photographs in Soil Mapping by Mark Baldwin, Howard M. Smith and Howard W. Whitlock

Soil Classification by Mark Baldwin, Charles E. Kellogg and James Thorp

Mark and Mary K. Baldwin Papers (SHSMO finding aid)

Visit our Missouri Bicentennial guide for more on famous Missourians and Missouri history.

Eugene Field was a popular humorist, newspaperman and poet. Eugene was born September 2, 1850 in St. Louis to Roswell (an attorney who represented Dred and Harriet Scott) and Frances Field. A young Eugene was known for his wit, friendliness and practical jokes rather than for being a serious student. So despite attending three colleges, he never graduated.

After a year of gallivanting around Europe, Field returned to St. Louis and took a writing job at the St. Louis Evening Journal. He married Julia Comstock in 1873 and in 1876 he was hired by the St. Louis Times-Journal where he penned "Funny Fancies;" a column of humorous articles, short stories and poems. It was so popular that newspapers around the country reprinted the column. In 1880, Field accepted the position of managing editor of the Denver Tribune. Both of his columns, "The Current Gossip" and "Odds and Ends," satirized daily life in Denver and gathered a large readership. He was lured away to Chicago when the Chicago Morning News hired him in 1883 to write “what I please on any subject I please” in his daily column, “Sharps and Flats.” "Sharps and Flats" became the most popular column of its times; being reprinted in hundreds of newspapers daily. In addition to pulling practical jokes and writing satiric columns and essays, Field also published several books and hundreds of poems. Most of his poems were sentimental in nature and themed around childhood. Many were inspired by his own (eight) children, such as “Little Boy Blue” and “Wynken, Blynken and Nod.” These poems earned Field the nickname, “The Poet of Childhood," which ironically, Field hated.

Field died in 1895 at the age of 45. His boyhood home in St. Louis is open to the public as the Field House Museum.

Maya Angelou was born on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis. She grew up in St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas. As a writer, Angelou is best known for her seven autobiographies, but she was also a poet, and a play- and screenwriter. Her interest in literature started at an early age in her readings of Langston Hughes, Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe. And her love for poetry and the spoken word was further instilled by an encounter with Mrs. Bertha Flowers, an educated black woman in the Stamps community who encouraged a young Maya to speak again after she had stopped talking following a serious of traumatic events.

Themes of Angelou’s poetry run the gamut from love and loss, to struggle and hope. Her works were influenced by both conventional literary and oral traditions; and many of her poems can be set to music. In contemporary time, her poetry was popularly successful but did not garner much critical acclaim as critics preferred poetry as a written, technical form and thought Angelou’s works were stronger in the verbal, performed form. Angelou’s motivation for creating poetry however was most likely based in the desire to evoke emotions in the readers/listeners, regardless of what forms the works took: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

Angelou received over 50 honorary doctorate degrees and is today celebrated as a memoirist, poet, educator, dramatist, producer, actress, historian, filmmaker, and civil rights activist. She died in 2014 at the age of 86 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

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 April is National Poetry Month, so check out our collections on Field and Angelou, or our latest virtual library display: Poet-Tree.

Visit the Field House Museum

Both Field and Angelou have stars on the St. Louis Walk of Fame

Missouri's fifth Poet Laureate

Visit our Missouri Bicentennial guide for more on famous Missourians and Missouri history.