Turning Points in Clay County, Missouri History

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Common Read

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Historic Site

Liberty Garrison School

Before 1865, it was illegal to teach enslaved people to read or write, and for more than a century African Americans in Liberty, like others across the U.S., lived under “separate but equal” education.

After the Civil War, African American students first attended a private school on West Mill in the home of Mrs. Laura Armstrong, a supportive white resident. Mrs. Lucretia Robinson later provided private tutoring at her North Water Street home. A third school operated from 1875–1879 in the Old Rock Church on a hill near the present Garrison site.

In 1877, African American residents established Garrison School. Its first building stood until 1910, when it burned. Although insurance covered only $2,500 of the $5,000 cost, the school board agreed to rebuild and temporarily held classes in the Negro Lodge Hall.

A new school opened in 1911. Principal Professor James A. Gay kept the name Garrison to honor abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. The school soon earned a reputation as one of Missouri’s best for African American students.

Pat Wahler is winner of Western Fictioneers' Best First Novel of 2018, a Walter Williams Award winner, and the winner of Author Circle Awards 2019 Novel of Excellence in Historical Fiction for I am Mrs. Jesse James.

Her most recent release is The Rose of Washington Square: A Novel of Rose O’Neill, Creator of the Kewpie Doll, winner of the Missouri Writers Guild’s Show Me Your Best Award.

A frequent contributor to the Chicken Soup for the Soul anthologies, Pat is an avid reader with a special passion for historical fiction, women’s fiction, and stories with heart. She makes her home in Missouri with her husband and a variety of rescue critters.

The long, bloody Civil War is finally at an end when Zee Mimms, the dutiful daughter of a Missouri preacher, is tasked with nursing her cousin, Jesse James, back to health after he suffers a near-fatal wound. During Jesse's long convalescence, the couple falls in love, but Jesse's resentment against the Federals runs deep. He has scores to settle. For him, the war will never be over. 

Zee is torn between deferring to her parents’ wishes and marrying for security or marrying for love and accepting the hard realities of life with an outlaw — living under an assumed name and forever on the run. For her, the choice she makes means the war is only beginning.

Step back in time and experience the legacy of self-sufficiency, innovation, and resilience at Watkins Woolen Mill and Homestead, the only 19th-century textile mill in the U.S. with its original machinery still intact.

Mill workers worked long days in high temperatures, with humidity ranging from 75-80%. Getting their dresses or hair caught in the exposed equipment was a constant hazard for the women and girls employed at the mill. Despite the extreme physical challenges, exposure to toxic chemicals, anthrax, and other dangers, conditions at Watkins Mill were far more inviting and relatively safer compared to the huge mills back east. There was no shortage of families moving to this remote frontier location, hoping for a better life.

Mark Lee Gardner is a recipient of the Frank Waters Award for Literary Excellence. His bestselling nonfiction books, many of them award winners, include Brothers of the Gun, The Earth is All That Lasts, Rough Riders, Shot All to Hell, and To Hell on a Fast Horse.

An authority on the American West, Mark has appeared on numerous television programs and other media, including the hit Netflix docuseries Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War. His YouTube video for WIRED’s Tech Support, where Mark answers questions from the Internet about the Wild West, has received more than six million views.

A native of Missouri, he holds an MA in American Studies from the University of Wyoming and lives with his wife, Katie, at the foot of Pikes Peak. 

Shot All to Hell by Mark Lee Gardner recounts the thrilling life of Jesse James, Frank James, the Younger brothers, and the most famous bank robbery of all time.

Follow the Wild West’s most celebrated gang of outlaws as they step inside Northfield’s First National Bank and back out on the streets to square off with heroic citizens who risked their lives to defend justice in Minnesota.

With compelling details that chronicle the two-week chase that followed — the near misses, the fateful mistakes, and the bloody final shootout on the Watonwan River, Shot All to Hell is a galloping true tale of frontier justice from the author of To Hell on a Fast Horse: The Untold Story of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett, Mark Lee Gardner.

Located in Kearney, Missouri, the Jesse James Birthplace & Museum invites guests to see where Frank and Jesse James were raised. Their parents, Robert and Zerelda James, purchased the property in 1845. Reverend James was one of the original trustees of William Jewell College. 

Jesse James, son of a Baptist minister, was born at the family home in 1847. Barely 16, he followed his older brother Frank into the Civil War. While Frank rode with Quantrill’s guerrillas, Jesse rode with Bloody Bill Anderson. After the war ended, Jesse returned home and joined other former Confederate guerrillas in a life of outlawry. 

This historic site shows their origin from Clay County farm boys to notorious outlaws. The museum features the world’s largest display of James’ family artifacts and Jesse’s original gravesite. The tour includes a 20-minute video, three galleries of artifacts, and a short walk to the farmhouse.  Guests take a self-guided tour around the authentically preserved grounds and see into the farmhouse where Jesse James was born in 1847.

Devon Mihesuah, an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, is the Cora Lee Beers Price Professor in the Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas and is the former editor of the American Indian Quarterly and the University Nebraska Press book series, “Contemporary Indigenous Issues.”

A historian by training, she is the author of numerous award-winning non-fiction and fiction books on Indigenous history and current issues, including Recovering Our Ancestors’ Gardens: Indigenous Recipes and Guide to Diet and Fitness, that was recently named the Best Indigenous Book in the World by Gourmand International.

She oversees the American Indian Health and Diet Project and the Facebook page, Indigenous Eating.

Drawing on her life as an Indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings such as asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass that offers us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices.

In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world.

For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.

Maple Woods Natural Area is a mature maple/oak forest and is recognized by the National Park Service as a significant Natural Area.

Missouri's natural areas represent some of the best, and last, examples of our state's original landscape. They are places where you can still see the rare plants, animals, and geological features that pre-settlement native Americans knew well or that explorers such as Lewis and Clark observed and recorded.

The Maple Woods Natural Area is a popular destination to view resident forest birds and spring migrant songbirds, and it is locally known for fall color and spring wildflower displays. It is also home to the pawpaw tree, a feature of our May focus area.

During their 1806 return up the Missouri River, the Lewis and Clark expedition survived on wild pawpaws when their other provisions ran low. The Shawnee and Cherokee also harvested pawpaws for food. They used the tree's fibrous bark to weave fishing nets, ropes, and strings.