The former homes of famous Missourians offer a glimpse into the times of historic figures no longer here to tell of their tales. Here is a look at some of the homes and stories of statesmen who helped shape Missouri.
Famous Missourians
The Jesse James Home and Museum
The Jesse James house in St. Joseph is where the Confederate bushwacker, robber and murderer met his end. Robert Ford concluded James' life at age 34 with a bullet to the back of his head.
Since his death April 3, 1882, many have toured the house, which was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. Museum director Gary Chilcote said 15,000-20,0000 people stop annually. The earliest James enthusiasts scrapped the floorboards to take home bloodstained splinters from where James died. A bullet hole remains in the wall. Chilocote thinks it's evidence Charles Ford missed when he and his brother, Robert, took aim at James for a $10,000 bounty.
James and his wife/first cousin, Zerelda, rented the house about 100 days under assumed names. The owners began offering 25-cent tours, and it has remained a museum since. The structure was relocated twice, first in 1939 from Lafeyette Street to a more visible spot near the Belt Highway. It was returned a couple blocks from the original location when St. Joseph banker Robert Keatley purchased the house in 1977 and gave it to the Pony Express Historical Association.
The old Greek Revival-style house is as James left it, complete with green shutters. In the display is a bullet carried in Jame's right lung nearly 17 years, put there by a Union calvalryman after the Civil War when the teen was known as a bloodthirsty guerrilla fighter who took part in the Centralia Massacre.
The museum focuses on James' death, but people come with tales about his life, like their grandmother doing James' laundry while hiding in a cave. "We don't go into all the stories or alleged stories about train robberies and bank robberies, how many people he killed and all that," Chilcote said. "We just simply let people tell their stories. There are an awful lot of stories out there."
Thomas Hart Benton House and Studio
Thomas Hart Benton House and Studio visitors see a famed regional painter's home as if the family just stepped out. More than 8,000 possessions remain on the Kansas City property almost as they were when Benton died in 1975. Used paintbrushes sit in multicolored coffee mugs. James Bond books rest in the library. His wife's spaghetti recipe is ready in the kitchen.
"They were frugal people," historic site administrator Steve Sitton said. "It's a big house with simple furnishings."
About 6,000 people annually visit the home of the most acclaimed painter in Missouri's history. Benton took pride in making common art for common people, using deep curves and powerful colors to depict surreal scenes of rural and small-town Midwest. "A Social History of the State of Missouri" is displayed in the state's Capitol showing images of keel boats, turkey shoots and slave auctions.
Born 1889 in Neosho to a family of lawyers and politicians, Benton mirrored their values by representing people of Missouri through art. He studied in Chicago, New York and France but returned to the Midwest to create an original American genre of painting - known as regionalism - and protest racism and fascism. He instructed many painters, most notably abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock.
The carriage house and stable were converted into Benton's work space, where he created pieces like the "Independence and the Opening of the West" mural for President Harry Truman's library. His mural "The Sources of Country Music" was nearly finished when a heart attack ended his life at age 85. His last work remains unsigned at the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Scott Joplin House
Around 1901, the "King of Ragtime" - one of the most influential Missouri musicians in history - moved into a second-story flat in St. Louis. Scott Joplin was working to build his career after early success of his "Maple Leaf Rag." Inside the Delmar Boulevard rowhouse, he wrote some of the tunes that made him the figurehead of a genre that brought the sounds of Midwest cabarets to the world.
Visitors from near and far come to honor the jazz innovator. The museum opened in 1991, after a housing authority company realized it was the icon's former home. Visitors of the Scott Joplin House tour the gaslit apartment, decorated in the style of Joplin's day, while listening to his music on player pianos.
The museum receives about 5,000 visitors annually and also hosts events like Ragtime Rendevu, where musicians perform ragtime traditionals, original tunes and other material on the first Sunday of every month. "People are really into ragtime, and there is a growing population of young people that love (older music)," Natural Resources Manager Almetta Jordan said. "People will drive some distances to say they played here at the Scott Joplin House."
Joplin was born 1868 in Texas. He performed in clubs as a teenager, traveling to Sedalia, St. Louis and Chicago. Two years after moving to Sedalia in 1894, he enrolled in the George R. Smith College. He became a popular local musician and produced "Maple Leaf Rag," which gained national notoriety.
He moved to St. Louis at the invitation of a peer, but tragedy accompanied creation of his exuberant music. After the death of his daughter and divorce from his first wife, Joplin produced "The Entertainer," "March Majestic" and "The Ragtime Dance." His second wife died of a cold, and he carried on in New York City to create two operas, a ballet and other works.
Although he died poor in 1917, his legacy lived on. Legendary pianists like Jelly Roll Morton recorded "Maple Leaf Rag" in the 1930s and '40s. By the '70s, a ragtime revival spurred scholars to reevaluate Joplin's music, giving him academic acclaim he was denied throughout life. National orchestras played his compositions, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, awarded a special Pulitzer Prize, and the old St. Louis tune "The Entertainer" was used as theme music for a 1973 film, "The Sting." Jordan said young musicians who play at the Scott Joplin House are still developing the old genre men like Joplin have passed on.
The Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) Boyhood Home
One of America's most revered writers was raised on Mississippi River banks in Hannibal. Before adopting the pen name Mark Twain - with the white suit and wild coiffure - Samuel Clemens' youth would come to drive his career. It served as the inspiration for "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and sequel, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," the novel Ernest Hemingway said all great American literature stems from.
The family lived in the home, a wooden two-story house complete with whitewashed fence, off and on for about 10 years. It stands on North Main Street as part of a group of exhibits like the homes of those who inspired the characters of Becky Thatcher and Huckleberry Finn.
The boyhood home inspired Aunt Polly's house. About 50,000 visitors a year see the window Tom Sawyer - thought to be based on Clemens and friends - climbed from in the novel. Executive Director Henry Sweets said seeing the real river, caves and community that inspired Twain helps bring the story to life.
"It's seldom that you have the opportunity, that an author is writing about such a real place. Most of it seems to be almost autobiographical," Sweets said. "When people come to Hannibal, they are usually familiar with the story of Tom Sawyer, and so they are looking for the inspiration of the book. When they find out that real people are used for the models of many of the characters, I think that makes the book a little more personal."
The boyhood home stands in contrast to Twain's mansion dream home built in Connecticut for his genteel wife, Olivia. The Hannibal museum memorializes the simple times - before he was a steamboat pilot, which inspired his pseudonym Mark Twain, the call for river depth of 12 feet. The Civil War halted civilian travel on the Mississippi, and Clemens later traveled west to mine silver and gold, before going broke and becoming a journalist. He gained fame as a humorist, fiction and travel writer. However, his publishing company went bankrupt, and the death of his wife and three children drove him into depression before his 1910 death in Connecticut. These experiences led him to write works like unfinished "The Chronicle of Young Satan," set in Austria and far removed from his works inspired by small-town Missouri.
The Historic Daniel Boone Home
Legendary pioneer Daniel Boone, born to British settlers in a Pennsylvania log cabin, earned his fame in the wilderness of Kentucky but died in a wooden house in the Missouri hills.
For those who want to know more about the man behind the legends, visitors can tour the house where he passed away in 1820 near Defiance. The Charles County-owned Historic Daniel Boone Home at Lindenwood Park is part of a village collected from those places where time has seemed to stop. A chapel, schoolhouse and small houses were trucked in to accompany what Nathan Boone, Daniel's son, built in 1803. Program coordinator Kristine Madras said the village provides a walk back in time. Visitors are asked to call at least two weeks in advance for a guided tour.
Many know Boone for raccoon hats or confuse him with Davy Crockett. "We have at least one visitor a month who thinks Daniel Boone died at the Alamo," Ryan Graham, superintendent of historic sites, said. Boone didn't like coonskin caps, though Fess Parker wore one in the 1964 TV series about Boone.
The real Boone moved to North Carolina at age 15 and became a skilled marksman. In 1755, he joined the British in the French and Indian War. A year later, he married, began a farm and family of 12.
In 1767, Boone began exploring hunting grounds in Kentucky. Pleased with the untainted wilderness, he led several area expeditions and founded Fort Boonesborough, where the family moved in 1775. His daughter Jemima was captured by Shawnee scouts, but Boone successfully amassed a rescue party. The head of a hammer-like tomahawk is displayed in the Boone home, which legend states Jemima picked up after it missed a rescuer.
Financial issues and land disputes drove Boone out of Kentucky. In West Virginia, he served as a lieutenant colonel and a legislative delegate.
Lasting celebrity stemmed from John Filson's "The Adventures of Col. Daniel Boon [sic]" in his book, "The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke." Filson portrayed Boone's wilderness adventures to readers around the world, making him the prototypical pioneer. Spain offered the new celebrity a large Missouri land grant. The family relocated in 1799. Boone never built on his property, moving between the homes of his children. After his wife died, he moved in with Nathan. Records indicate the museum's bed is positioned like his deathbed.
After 25 years, his body was allegedly taken to Kentucky. Controversy arose about whether the correct corpse or all the remains were taken. Graham said it's fitting for mystery to surround the grave of a pioneer who often disappeared into the wilderness.