Maplewood History: Sterling P. Davison, Jr. Was A Mayor. Who Was Spencer Davis?

By Doug Houser | February 18, 2020

For the past few nights I’ve been staring at the computer screen, scrolling through my archive of historic Maplewood documents and photographs waiting for something to jump out and suggest itself for my next blog post.  Nothing has been jumping. It’s not like I’m running out of material.  I have plenty. The love letters of William Lyman Thomas alone are huge.  But every time I sit down to try and coax a blog out of them I get overwhelmed.  There are far too many to put on this blog. Reading them and trying to decide what will interest the readers is taxing.  I think my brain is shutting down on that subject. There is also a family story in Jim Fischer’s box that I have been meaning to sort out ever since he gave it to Luke Havel and myself several years ago.  I need to just sit down and do that.

Maplewood History: The Love Song of W. Lyman Thomas

By Doug Houser | February 2, 2020

I have no evidence that Thomas was aware of T.S. Eliot and his poetry. Their lives overlapped a bit.  Thomas 1846-1918 and Eliot 1888-1965. Hopefully the spirit of Eliot will forgive me for parodying the title of one of his most famous poems, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Prufrock as it is commonly called (I am told by Wikipedia) was first published in 1915.  The Thomases by then had just about lived their entire lives. Kate would pass in 1917, William in 1918.  I suppose the love letters of William Lyman Thomas to his intended, Catherine (Kate) Compton Sutton, could also be called a love song.

Maplewood History: On the Rediscovery of Random Bits of Unrelated Information

By Doug Houser | January 9, 2020

I’m sure no one would be surprised to hear that the rediscovery of the history of our small inner ring suburb involves keeping track of very many different bits of info gotten from a wide variety of sources.  Roughly three times a month I attempt to gather in a single post many of these randomly acquired bits that are somehow related to one another. In my mind, and in my computer, these bits are floating around waiting to be drawn together by some common theme.  My computer is much better at keeping track of these things than my mind is. Truth is this blog would not be possible without the record storing abilities of the computer.  I was terrible at keeping track of pages of information back in the analog days of filing cabinets. I can’t tell you how many times I searched for that certain piece of paper that I just saw a moment ago but now is nowhere to be found. These days I often am looking for information online.  The bits I find, first, go into my Documents folder – the plan being to file them in separate more specific folders later.  Some are cross filed in a few different folders.

Maplewood History: From the Fennell Trove – Sam Bland’s Journal – Part 2

By Doug Houser | December 20, 2019

Although the response to the first installment of Sam Bland‘s Journal was somewhat less than enthusiastic, I’m going to post the second part anyhow.  In my opinion it contains much of interest, but I know how it is when one has a lot of emails and limited time to spend on them. I skim some of the more complicated ones intending to get back to them later.  If you’re doing that too, you’re forgiven. Maybe I didn’t point out enough of the interesting things Sam recorded?  Much of it is about gardening – planting things. That is not one of my interests.  But I know there are many gardeners out there. Is there nothing of interest to a gardener in Sam’s journal?  We’ll try it again.

Maplewood History: Fennell Trove Contains Some Extraordinary Images – Addenda

By Doug Houser | November 30, 2019

Addenda is a word that I don’t often use.  At least, I don’t remember the last time I used it.  I knew the word I wanted for the title of this post was either addenda or addendum but I admit I didn’t know which was correct.  I now know that addenda is the plural of addendum. It is not the feminine form of addendo as some of you might suspect. I’m talking to you, Antonia and Antonio. If this post had only contained a single image or a single document then I would have used addendum, I think.  It contains much more than that as you’ll see. Thanks to the vast amount of space the internet allows for this sort of thing, I am able to post many more images of the historic items that these many kind folks have let me copy.  Much thanks to Nancy Fennell Hawkins for sharing her trove of Fennell memorabilia with all of us.

Maplewood History: Fennell Trove Contains Some Extraordinary Images – Part Three

By Doug Houser | November 7, 2019

Parts One and Two of the Fennell trove are both loaded with terrific images.  Many folks have taken the time to express their appreciation for having been able to view them.  I, too, am grateful to Nancy Fennell Hawkins for having had the opportunity to present them. But we’re not done yet.  When I wrote the title and included the word “extraordinary” I was thinking of a couple of images that the reader will see in this post.  These images are very rare. They truly are treasures. It is immensely rewarding to discover images like these. Rediscover in this case.

Maplewood History: Fennell Trove Contains Some Extraordinary Images – Part Two

By Doug Houser | October 31, 2019

Just a few of our fellow Maplewoodians ever hit the big time.  Regular followers of this space will recall my series on famous Maplewoodians that wrapped up last July. 

Aided by a powerful search engine driven by computers with speeds that were unimaginable just a few years ago, I was able to offer nearly incontrovertible evidence that Pee Wee Russell, the jazz clarinet virtuoso, was the most famous citizen of our fair town.  He was followed closely by Paul Christman, a mere football god. Christman lived on Anna. I haven’t figured out Pee Wee’s address yet but I’m still trying. Why bring this up now while we’re taking a look at the Fennell family trove graciously provided by Nancy Fennell Hawkins?  These images of Nancy’s are just as important as the ones of Russell and Christman. Look closely.

Maplewood History: George Shields and his Maplewood Subdivision

By Doug Houser | October 9, 2019

The age we live in is simultaneously fascinating and terrifying.  There is no clear indicator as to whether our technological advances will save or sink us.  Wonderful tool that it can be, the internet is both a boon and a curse. There is plenty written every day about the curse side of it.  This post is about the boon. The boon in this instance is my internet subscription to Newspapers.com.  From this I was able to learn some very interesting details about my neighborhood.  It is identified as Shields Subdivision on the Maplewood map in the 1909 Plat book of St. Louis county. That is all I knew about it.  The boundaries are Big Bend on the west, Sutton on the east, Elm on the north and the railroad tracks on the south.

Maplewood History: A Look at Downtown Shortly Before the Demolitions Began

By Doug Houser | October 1, 2019

The photographs of Maplewood’s business district that I have been running for the last four or five blogs have generated a lot of interest and a few requests. This post is what amounts to a file dump. Due to the difficulty most readers would have searching my old posts, I am posting some images that I have used before and some that I haven’t. To be honest, I’m not absolutely sure which is which. And I found the text below in the same file with the photographs.

Maplewood History: Startling Pre-debacle Images of Buildings on Manchester

By Doug Houser | September 23, 2019

Man. What I won’t stoop to in order to have an eye catching headline?  As you may suspect the images in this post shot by Glenn Haley and submitted by Mike Jones aren’t exactly startling.  Well, maybe. You let me know if they are. I have looked at these and others like them so many times that I’m numb. I don’t know how those of you unfamiliar with them will react.

Maplewood History: From Up In The Air – Part 3

By Doug Houser | September 16, 2019

Everyone seems to enjoy looking at these aerial photographs so here are a few more in this post.  If you still have questions after you have looked at these, go ahead – ask away. We all learn from the comments of the readers. If you are just joining us you may want to take a look at the previous two posts in this series.  Part One.  Part Two.  Or if you’ve never heard of the Maplewood History blog before now, you might want to take a look at some of the previous 300+ on the subject that have been drifting in the ether for the past decade.   Just Google “Maplewood History”. My wife tells me that there are other cities named Maplewood in the United States.  That may be true but I bet none of the others have 300+ blog posts out there about the history of their virtually unknown small burgs.