Public history students research region’s religious history; exhibit opening Dec. 4

Northwest Missouri State University history students applied their research skills this fall to learn about the region’s religious history for a new exhibit at the Nodaway County Historical Society Museum.

The exhibit, “Religious History in Nodaway County,” opens with a reception from 7 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 4, at the museum, located at 110 N Walnut St. in Maryville. It is free and open to the public.

Students in Northwest’s Practicum in American Local History course organized the exhibit under the instruction of Professor of History Dr. Elyssa Ford, who also serves as president of the Nodaway County Historical Society Board. Most of the students enrolled in the course are studying majors in history with minors in public history and museum studies.

“There is a lot of items that the museum has, but there wasn’t very much in the way of interpretive panels, so I saw a lot a lot of opportunity for the students,” Ford said of the Historical Society’s collection related to religious history. She added, “The other reason is that there’s just a lot of really interesting and complicated ideas to talk about with the display of religion.”

The exhibit features the presence of two Black churches in Maryville as well as the Sisters of St. Francis and the local hospital they founded. Other topics include interdenominational activities and the local history of the Freemasons and Daughters of the American Revolution.

As more time passes since Mosaic Life Care took ownership of the former St. Francis Hospital in 2019, some may be surprised to learn about the hospital’s beginning, Ford said. The hospital was founded in 1894 by seven Sisters of St. Francis at the urging of a local Catholic priest, and the sisters operated the hospital for decades.

“I’m really glad that we’re able to have that story on display so people are more aware of that history,” Ford said. “There are some really amazing things they did, not just for Maryville and Nodaway County, but for the larger training of health practitioners in rural areas and bringing hospitals to rural places across the U.S. So it really is a story that’s beyond just Nodaway County.”

William Edwards, a junior from Knob Noster, Missouri, and Mason Hefner, a junior from Clatonia, Nebraska, researched the Sisters of St. Francis, whose history also includes the former Mount Alverno motherhouse that stands today as the Maryville Treatment Center.

“We focused a lot on Mother Augustine, who is really important to their mission at the hospital, which was to provide good quality standards for rural America,” Edwards said. “It was her mission as part of coming out here to make a hospital that was up to the same standards of what you would see in an urban center.”

The stories of two churches comprising Black congregants – Mt. Zion Baptist Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church – also stand out in the region’s religious history. The issue of slavery split the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1844.

“There was a lot of overlap and interaction and communication between Black and white churches in the community, even though there were these separate Black churches,” Ford said. “You’ve got this element of segregation, but you also have this element of cooperation that existed. … The Methodist Church and the split with the Civil War is really good because it is a different story than has popularly been told in the county.”

As they conducted their research and prepared the exhibit, students in the practicum course read about the history of religion in Nodaway County and traveled to some of the area’s important religious-based sites, including the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration convent in Clyde and Conception Abbey. Students began the fall semester by reading a guide to interpreting religion at museums and historic sites, which helped them ponder the framework of their exhibit.

The students spent several weeks conducting research, accessing written histories, newspaper collections and other records to glean information, in addition to combing through religious items the museum has in its collection.  

“(The students are) doing that research and talking about issues in museums and thinking about displays, the possible concerns that visitors might have related to seeing religious history talked about,” Ford said. “Then we have to spend time working on designing the label. We have a public history lab on campus, so they get to use the press and learn all of those very professional skills.”

Vivian King, a sophomore from Fillmore, Missouri, and Shelby Chesnut, a senior from Lincoln, Nebraska, created a section of the exhibit about the Freemasons and the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) in Nodaway County. Their research highlights the two organizations’ missions and impacts on local communities.

The exhibit includes a World War I-era certificate presented by the American Red Cross to the local Daughters of the American Revolution in recognition of their substantial financial support during the war. It also includes a chart dated around the 1870s that the Freemasons maintained to record its members’ ranks.

“It definitely helps enhance writing and reading,” King said about the project. “It definitely helped the research aspect of things. Finding information on the Nodaway County DAR was not easy.”

In addition to the exhibit, the students created websites and lesson plans related to the topics they researched, which are accessible at nodawaycountymuseum.com.