In April and October of 2022, I made two different trips to Missouri. The first was planned as a “Heritage Trip” with my parents, originally scheduled for April 2020 before Covid hit. Once rescheduled, it turned out my husband Mike was able to join us. He and I started the adventure on our own, with a quick visit to St. Louis before heading to Springfield, IL to see the Lincoln Presidential Museum and Library; Hannibal, MO to explore all the Mark Twain sites; Centralia, MO to view the sites of the Centralia Massacre and the Battle of Centralia, as well as see where some of my Traughber ancestors were buried at the Centralia Cemetery; then finally, Jefferson City, MO to view some state monuments and explore the Capitol building.

After that, we returned to St. Louis to pick up my parents at the airport, then enjoyed a day at Gateway Arch National Park, which features the Gateway Arch, the old Courthouse (where the Dred Scott case was first heard), and the Museum (telling the story of westward expansion). We also drove to the site where Benton Barracks used to stand (that’s where James Calaway Hale spent two years); and we found the neighborhood where my mom’s grandparents — Frank Brandt and Fleeta Jackson Brandt — once lived with their families, then met and married.

At that point, Mike returned to San Jose, and my parents and I continued on the original Heritage Trip we had planned to Kirksville, MO. That is where my great grandmother, Nora Petree Traughber, grew up and attended the Kirksville Normal School (as did many of her siblings). It’s also where her parents — Bailis Petree and Mary Ann Hale Petree (who have a big role in my book) — are buried. My great grandfather William Francis Traughber attended the School of Osteopathy in Kirksville as well, and that is there he met Nora. Each of them later furthered their education in California — she, at Stanford; he, at USC — before marrying in San Jose and settling in Southern California.

In Kirksville, we visited the old Kirksville Normal School, which is now Truman University; A.T. Still University, where we learned more about osteopathy; the Courthouse, where we learned more about the Battle of Kirksville and the Tornado that ravaged Kirksville in 1899 (I have old family photos showing the devastation); and the Adair County Historical Society Museum, where we learned a lot about Kirksville’s history. We also took photos in front of the two houses where the Petrees lived (both are still standing), as well as visited Highland Park Cemetery to see where the Petrees are buried. To learn more about these places, click on the links to be taken to my related blog posts.

After another stop in Centralia so my dad could see the Traughber headstones, I dropped off my parents at the airport in St. Louis, then headed off on my own to the Missouri Civil War Museum at Jefferson Barracks. There I learned a LOT about the Civil War in Missouri, took many photos, talked to one of the museum’s curators, and made the big decision to forgo working on my historical fiction novel for the time being and focus instead on the nonfiction A State Divided: The Civil War Letters of James Calaway Hale and Benjamin Petree of Andrew County, Missouri.

Back in San Jose, I devoted many hours to transcribing letters and working on my book. Then, I proposed a second trip to Missouri to Mike — this time to the area of Andrew County — and fortunately, he said he was “in.” So, in October 2022, we flew to Kansas City, rented a car, and headed to Savannah to visit the Andrew County Museum and Historical Society. There, I met Genealogist Kathy Ridge, who became a huge help to me as I worked on my book. Here’s an ECW post where I wrote more about why I am so thankful for her. We spent hours at the museum talking to Kathy, who was a wealth of information, and exploring the museum’s many displays. We also wandered around downtown Savannah, drove to the area near Rosendale where Nora Petree was born, and visited Fillmore Cemetery to find where James C. Hale and Elizabeth Brown Hale are buried.

We actually stayed in St. Joseph, which offered us a lot to see: the Pony Express Museum, the Patee House Hotel/Museum, the Jesse James House, the Wyeth-Tootle Mansion, Mora Cemetery’s “Voices of the Past” Program, the Glore Psychiatric Museum, the Black Archives Museum, the Robideaux Row Museum, and more. We ended with a visit to the WWI Museum in Kansas City before returning to San Jose.

I’ve connected many of my blog posts in the descriptions above if you want more details about these places we visited. Here are some favorite photos from those two visits.