Category Archives: Historiography
Marie’s Colored Glass
This is a Christmas story written for my pre-tween granddaughters, who were visiting us at our bed & breakfast during Christmas week, 1999. I had designed and created a new stained glass window for the front door of our Victorian … Continue reading
Earliest Recollections
Childhood memories of the steam engine and coal mining era in central Missouri Continue reading
Hannibal in World War Two
Shoes and Boots The Hannibal shoe factories provided a substantial boost to the local economy as they worked full tilt to meet the deadlines of government contracts for combat boots and shoes for our troops during World War II. The … Continue reading
School Yard Buddies
When I was in the fifth grade at Eugene Field School, I met and made friends with Jim Tate, older brother of the slender little girl who would later become the love of my life. Jim was a pretty rough-and-tough … Continue reading
Hannibal Railfanning
Wabash Railroad Trains were colorful when I was growing up in the late forties and early fifties. Passenger train themes, locomotive paint schemes, freight car slogans, and cabooses that were rolling billboards, left over from the “glamour era” of the … Continue reading
Hannibal National Guard
I know there’s no such thing as the Hannibal National Guard, but when I was a boy, my dad was in the National Guard for almost all of my childhood, and we lived in Hannibal, so the name seemed correct … Continue reading
Mississippi River Town
Living with Spring Flooding Hannibal, Missouri is a mid-western town located on the western banks of the Mississippi River, just south of Quincy, Illinois, and about one hundred miles north of St Louis. It had already become an important river … Continue reading
Camery Field Playground in Hannibal MO
When I was a youngster, about 11 or 12, the families who lived in the Elzea Addition area of Hannibal, Missouri, gathered together to turn an overgrown field west of Lindell Avenue at Clark Street into a neighborhood park … Continue reading
Bevier & Southern Railroad
One of my earliest personal memories is a visit to my grandparents’ house in Bevier, Missouri. My grandfather, William Thomas Vaughn, was pastor of the Baptist Church there. My family had traveled by a Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad steam … Continue reading
Gideon’s Island
Gideon’s Island By Larry E Vaughn There’s something a little frightening about your twelve year old son achieving manhood. First he’s childishly mischievous, kicking pea gravel at his buddy, and then he’s using proper logic to make a decision that … Continue reading
Larry E Vaughn 