The Missouri in the Civil War Message Board

Re: The interest is all but gone

The entire subject needs a swift kick.

Almost twelve years ago, I came up with the idea to have a special collections that revolved totally around Quantrill, his men and the border wars. I thought the Quantrill and border community where I lived (Independence, Missouri) would leap in thinking it was a great idea and I would have strong, driving support. I was wrong. Though many familiar names in the Quantrill research community did give generously by donating books and magazines from their own collections, I didn't get the overall support I had hoped.
I used to live in Gentry, Arkansas in my teen years. In about 2005, I saw Quantrill guerrilla, Jesse J. Carl in the Quantrill Mens Reunion book by Donald Hale. I thought it would be a great idea to build the collection for northwest Arkansas so they could learn about who they had. As I received items for the collection, my research basically exploded and I found many guerrillas of Quantrill, Anderson, Livingston, Marchbanks, and other guerrilla personalities as well as many Union soldiers that fought directly with Quantrill and other Missouri guerrillas. Then, I found many citizens and guerrilla family members from the border wars down there as well.
I inquired about housing it in the Gentry Public Library and it was accepted. But....we had a falling out and I moved it to the Benton County Historical Society in Bentonville, Arkansas. It was never used there the way I thought it would after I was told of all the many, many things that could be done with it.
So...I moved to the Bates County Historical Society and Museum in Butler, Missouri where it is today. I got discouraged and somewhat quit on it and signed the entire collection over to them. I still run the website I built for it. I titled it the "Quantrill Special Collections Research." Here is the link:

https://rlshhm.wixsite.com/qscrjosephines

The site was once named "Josephine's" after Bill Anderson's sister that died in the Union Jail collapse. I all but retired from it and the entire border wars subject earlier this year and quit posting on it and have let it stand on it's own. I once sent out a scathing, but polite, letter to all of my followers that didn't seem to take effect, regarding this history fading away and ideas I had to combat it. Many were absolutely thrilled I gave the entire collection to Bates as they are a respected and well liked historical society. But hardly anyone has even come by to see it. Here is the link to the books and publications I got for it:

https://rlshhm.wixsite.com/qscrjosephines/bookshelf

My hopes and goals for the collection when I came up with it was to aim it directly at students and teachers. Everyone was welcome to use it, but I hoped it might be a field trip destination for kids to work on papers or studies about the "new" people that was on the site and were buried in Arkansas. It was even recognized by the Arkansas Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission as being educationally relevant. But....... it's collected dust in three places.

I have pushed, pressed, remarked, drove, said, pointed and almost yelled.

Complacency. No movement hardly at all.

Yes, there are still reenactments and societies and SCV camps (sort of), but the action is dwindling. And that was before Covid.

Off my soapbox now.

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The interest is all but gone
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