America's 250th: Articles of local interest

Honoring the unyielding triumph of the American spirit; New artwork will celebrate America’s 250th

SUBMITTED TO BRANSON GLOBE

Celebrating alongside Freedom 250 in honor of America’s 250th anniversary, a powerful new mural is being created by Raine – America’s Muralist, offering a sweeping visual narrative of the nation’s history and enduring spirit. This commemorative piece captures the essence of the American story through 250 defining years, representing the Faith and Foundation, Industry and Sacrifice, and Living Legacy of America.

The artwork brings together iconic founding documents, national symbols and influential leaders who shaped the nation’s early identity. Scenes of westward expansion, military service, technological innovation and modern civic life illustrate how the American experience has continually grown and transformed.

At the heart of the composition, a majestic bald eagle and a flowing American flag serve as unifying symbols, underscoring themes of resilience, progress and shared heritage.

Rendered against an aged parchment backdrop, the piece evokes the passage of time and the continuity of the American journey. Past, present and future are woven into a single panoramic story—one that honors the nation’s roots while looking ahead with optimism and purpose.

As the United States marks its 250th year, this artwork will stand as a tribute to the people, ideals and milestones that define the American spirit. It invites viewers to reflect on where we’ve been, celebrate where we are, and imagine what comes next.

America’s Mural is being created in the lobby of the IMAX Entertainment Complex in Branson, Missouri. Raine started work on the mural on March 22 and will continue until he completes it sometime in mid May.

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Join community in celebrating America’s 250th birthday with Liberty Tree dedication, April 20

SUBMITTED TO BRANSON GLOBE

To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the United States, Taneycomo Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, along with the Forsyth Garden Club, is proud to announce the formal dedication of a Liberty Tree on April 20, 2026, at 1 p.m. at Forsyth Garden, 100 Main St., Forsyth. The public is welcome to attend this free patriotic event.

The Liberty Tree tradition dates back to the American Revolution, when a stately elm in Boston served as a rallying point for citizens to discuss independence and community. By planting this tree, the Daughters of the American Revolution seek to root the spirit of 1776 in Forsyth and all of Taney County for generations to come.

We will have a tree dedication with speakers from the Forsyth Garden Club and the Forsyth MC-JROTC who have graciously offered to perform Color Guard duties in honor of those Patriots who fought and are still fighting for our freedom. 

“This tree is more than just a sapling; it is a living symbol of our shared history and our growth as a nation,” says Valerie Coleman, regent of the chapter. “As we approach the semi-quincentennial, we want to provide a place where the community can reflect on our past and look forward to our future.”

Local residents, veterans and students are encouraged to attend this historic milestone as we celebrate 250 years of American independence.

The National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) is a women’s service organization whose members can trace their lineage to an individual who contributed to securing American independence during the Revolutionary War. DAR members annually provide millions of hours of volunteer service to their local communities across the country and world. DAR chapters participate in projects to promote historic preservation, education, and patriotism.

If you are interested in learning more about DAR membership, visit  https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100076001113062  or Valerie Coleman, Regent, valeriecolemandar@gmail.com or for membership information please contact kathleendicedar@gmail.com.

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Ralph Foster Museum at C of O to open new exhibit: ‘Celebrate America’s Stories’

College of the Ozarks is opening a new exhibit in the Ralph Foster Museum titled “Celebrate America’s Stories” in honor of America 250, a yearlong initiative. This exhibit showcases American history with the goal of reawakening the American spirit for generations to come. The exhibit will run through Friday, Dec. 18, 2026.

The exhibit

As visitors venture through the exhibit, they will embark on a journey through American history. The exhibit timeline begins in 1776, featuring a Revolutionary War jacket worn by a Continental Army soldier. This jacket is only on display Fridays, Saturdays and patriotic holidays due to its fragility.

Guests will view Great Depression paintings by award-winning American painter and muralist Thomas Hart Benton, hand-stitched historical quilts, newspapers from the JFK presidency, battle garments from the Vietnam War, and articles covering the first moon landing.

The College is pleased to feature one of First Lady Pat Nixon's gowns in the exhibit. Nixon had close ties to C of O, even visiting the campus in March of 1970 during a five‐state, four‐day inspection of college volunteer projects. She was greeted by over 100 students waving large American flags. The First Lady planted a pine tree in front of the M.A. Lyons Memorial Library and ate lunch with students at the Pearl Rogers Dining Center.

An interactive timeline video, created by junior history major Madison Suffal, will feature additional facts about the many items on display.

“The timeline starts with the founding of one of the first colonies, Jamestown, and it goes all the way to the War on Terror,” Suffal said. “Under each photo is a date and title. I didn’t add commentary, which allows viewers to create their own opinions about historical events.”

A reception took place on March 27 with Associate Professor of Humanities David Parrish, director of Academic Assessment, giving an opening speech about remembering the history of the Revolution and the pursuit of a more perfect union. Following Parrish's speech, guests enjoyed refreshments while exploring the exhibit.

A generational impact: Awakening the American spirit

“By our nature, many of us get caught up in the day-to-day routine and don’t really ponder the past,” said Annette Sain, director of the Ralph Foster Museum. “It is our hope that this exhibit will be inspiring for visitors. We especially hope our younger visitors will attain a sense of pride in our nation’s history.”

To appeal to young visitors, cartoon-like pictures of a very young Ralph Foster, nicknamed Ralphie, will be hung throughout the museum with “fun facts” to get children excited about United States history. Children can also play with Lincoln Logs, which will be set up near the Great Depression and homesteading era of the exhibit.

“I think this exhibit will be full of reflection. I can see grandparents bringing their grandkids to the exhibit and recalling stories as they lived through these historic moments. It’s definitely a multi-generational event,” said Kiley Hutcheson, director of retail operations at College of the Ozarks.

A large goal of this exhibit is to awaken the American spirit, reflect on America's past, and share the value of patriotism with the younger generations as the country reaches a great milestone.

A note from the curator

Senior history major Logan Stout was thrilled at the opportunity to curate the “Celebrate America’s Stories” exhibit. He said the curation process was long and difficult, but worth it. Stout conducted research on 250 years of history, searched for artifacts to display, and decided on item locations within the exhibit, a process he described as “easier said than done.”

“I would describe the exhibit as a social history of this proud nation. When thinking about American history it is easy for us to get caught up in the stories like the American Revolution and World War II, but these only show a section of history. I am hoping that my exhibit is able to evoke emotion in those who have experienced this history firsthand but also provide understanding for others who did not experience these events,” Stout said.

“I hope that visitors will take away a deeper sense of what it means to be American, and they see that although there have been struggles in the past and present, Americans have always risen to meet these struggles. This is an exhibit representing over 250 years of American history, and my goal is to find a way that the modern American can relate to these stories and find themselves in our nation’s timeline.”

When Stout graduates in May, he plans to work as a museum curator. He is extremely grateful for his time working at The Ralph Foster Museum and attributes much of his personal growth to his outstanding supervisors.

About Ralph Foster Museum

The Ralph Foster Museum, on the campus of College of the Ozarks, grew from humble beginnings in the 1920s to become one of the Midwest’s foremost institutions of historical preservation.

Dr. Robert M. Good, the president of the school at the time, took an interest in the idea of a museum on campus. Subsequently, he made space available for the display of items in the basement of Abernathy Hall, a boys’ residence hall. When the residence hall was later vacated, funds were provided to convert the entire building into a museum.

The primary focus of the Ralph Foster Museum today is to collect, preserve, interpret and exhibit items relating to the Ozarks region. One of the more famous exhibits is the original vehicle used in the television series, "The Beverly Hillbillies." In addition, visitors will find College baseball and agricultural memorabilia, antiques, weapons, dolls, natural history and other items from around the world.

The Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and ticket prices can be found on the Museum's website.

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Who were the ‘Bald Knobbers?’​

After the Civil War, Southwest Missouri was a devastated region characterized by a failing economy, high taxes, lawlessness, disorder and a general breakdown of society, especially in small towns and rural areas.

During the 1800s these rugged Ozark hills were wild and untamed. Law enforcement had a difficult time and crime was rampant. A group formed, originally to assist law-abiding citizens. “They started as good guys from good families, and they wanted to get things straightened after the Civil War.

Everybody did,” said Marie Day, a Christian County historian about what she’d want people to know about the Bald Knobbers. “That was the only way they could figure out how to do it. It’s like they kind of had a reason for being bad because they had to survive.” 

The Baldknobbers: Ozarks’ fierce vigilantes

Soon though the group grew so powerful they were bending the laws for their own gain. Before long, they were far worse than the criminals they originally tried to fight against. They terrorized the hills, thieves and murderers who traveled in packs and wore black hoods to protect their identity. Harold Bell Wright’s novel, “The Shepherd of the Hills,” features generic Bald Knobbers as the story’s villains.

When Nathaniel N. Kinney settled in Taney County, Missouri, in 1883, he found a deplorable state of affairs. Outlaws and renegades ruled, most of them holdovers from the bushwhackers and guerrillas that rampaged through Missouri during the Civil War. After the war, the lack of even minimal law enforcement afforded outlaws free rein. Clans elected and controlled the local sheriff, who had the authority to subpoena jury panels. If outlaws or their relatives didn’t sit on the juries, they bribed those who did. As a result, although as many as forty murders occurred in Taney County between 1865 and 1885, not a single suspect was convicted. Taney County includes the towns of Branson, Forsyth, Hollister, Merriam Woods, Rockaway Beach, Table Rock and Taneyville.

Nat Kinney feared no man, standing 6 feet 6 and weighing more than 300 pounds. After yet another murder on September 22, 1883, Kinney began to consider forming a law and order league patterned after other vigilante groups that were popular during the time. When a biased jury acquitted the murderer, Kinney called together 12 county leaders who met in secret, forming a committee to fight the lawlessness and elect officials who would enforce the law. The group became known as the Bald Knobbers. Though the Bald Knobbers began with “good intentions,” the vigilante group’s violence eventually drew national attention. These vigilantes operated in Taney, Christian and Douglas counties in the late 1800s.

The organization grew rapidly, and by the time they met on April 5, 1885, two hundred people attended a meeting on Snapp’s Bald, a hilltop south of Forsyth, Missouri. Kinney, an excellent speaker, was unanimously elected as their leader. Extracting a vow of secrecy from his followers, Kinney instructs them to recruit new members to carry out the group’s goals.

Within days, the Bald Knobbers made a public display of their force when over 100 of them broke open the door of the Taney County jail and kidnapped brothers Frank and Tubal Taylor. The Taylor brothers were well known in the area for their viciousness and were jailed for wounding a storekeeper during an argument over credit for a pair of boots. The local store owner, John Dickenson, happened to be a Bald Knobber. After breaking the two out of jail, the mob hauled the brothers south of Forsyth and hanged them.

The degree of violence appalled several of the founding members, who quickly dropped out, but the Bald Knobbers continued to grow, and before long, the group had between 500 and 1,000 members.

Kinney’s group began to further “correct” the lawlessness by making night rides to scare such “lowlifes” as drunks, gamblers, or “loose” women into changing their ways. They frightened wife beaters, couples “living in sin,” and men who failed to support their families. Sometimes they even called on those they considered “ornery.”

The community began to split into two factions – those who supported Kinney and those who considered him a tyrant and wished him dead.

The violence increased as the group flogged or branded suspected thieves, arsonists and robbers. They would hang or beat a man to death for assault, disturbing the peace, or destroying property. Some Bald Knobbers began using their menacing power for greedy, selfish purposes, going after men who owed them money or owned land they coveted. They “settled” feuds over fence lines and property deeds, whipped men for disrupting services in their churches, or for supporting the wrong candidate in the election.

However, the harshest punishment was saved for those who talked against them. Some victims who resisted the Bald Knobbers disappeared. Several turned up in the woods, beaten to death. Those who lived to tell claimed that Kinney’s followers killed more than thirty men and at least four women, but estimates that are more realistic place the number between fifteen and eighteen.

As the Bald Knobbers grew in numbers and their violent acts escalated, a vehement resentment festered among a small group of men who called themselves the Anti-Bald Knobbers. However, the vigilantes thwarted every effort to mitigate the situation. The courthouse was burned down when a judge called for a state audit to ferret out corruption among the county’s officeholders.

The nation’s newspapers published stories about the bloody war in Missouri, and the Bald Knobbers were described as the most significant and fiercest vigilante movement in the country. In 1887, the Bald Knobbers killed William Edens and Charley Green, both of whom had been critical of the group, and seriously injured several members of their families. This brought a further outcry from the nation’s newspapers.

Twenty Bald Knobbers were arrested, and most received light sentences ranging from fines to short prison terms. However, four were sentenced to death. On August 20, 1888, Nat Kinney was shot and killed by Billy Miles, a member of the Anti-Bald Knobbers, in a planned assassination. Though Miles was tried for Kinney’s murder, he was found not guilty based on self-defense.

Though the violence continued for a short time, by 1899, the era of the Bald Knobbers had run its course.

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America’s 250th: The Sultana, Americas’ worst maritime disaster

BY GARY J. GROMAN, a.k.a. The Ole Seagull Columnist Emeritus 

When you think of historic shipwrecks, the Titanic is probably the first one that comes to mind. But did you know that the deadliest maritime disaster in United States history happened right here at home? On April 27, 1865, a steamboat named the Sultana exploded and sank in the muddy waters of the Mississippi River. The horrific event claimed the lives of up to 1,800 people. This staggering number is actually higher than the death toll of the Titanic. Yet, this massive tragedy is practically missing from our history books.

To understand how this disaster happened, we have to look back at the chaotic days right after the American Civil War. In April 1865, thousands of Union soldiers were finally released from terrible Confederate prisoner-of-war camps, like Andersonville and Cahaba. These men were starving, weak and sick. More than anything, they were desperate to return home to their families in the North.

To help them get home, the U.S. government paid steamboat captains to transport the soldiers upriver. They offered a very generous deal: $2.75 per enlisted man and $8 per officer. For steamboat captains, this was a golden ticket to make a lot of money very quickly. The captain of the Sultana, James Cass Mason, saw a massive payday. He made a corrupt deal with a military officer named Captain Reuben Benton Hatch. Hatch promised to guarantee Mason a huge load of prisoners if Mason agreed to give him a secret kickback.

The Sultana was a modern wooden steamboat, but it had a legal safety capacity of only 376 passengers and a crew of 85. Fueled entirely by greed, Captain Mason packed an unbelievable 2,127 to over 2,400 people onto the boat. The ship was so heavily overloaded that its decks began to crack and sag under the weight of the men, and the crew had to use heavy wooden beams to support them.

To make matters worse, the boat had serious mechanical problems. On the trip down the river, one of its four boilers started to leak. A mechanic wanted to take a few days to fix it properly. Still, the ship's chief engineer knew that a delay would cost them their profitable load of prisoners. Instead, they chose to do a quick, cheap patch job that took just one day. The Sultana also used a specific type of boiler that easily trapped dirty, muddy river water, which created dangerous hot spots in the metal. Finally, they started their slow journey north during the heaviest spring floods in the river's history.

The Sultana was about seven miles north of Memphis, Tennessee, when disaster struck at around 2 a.m. on April 27, 1865. The patched boiler suddenly and violently exploded, followed instantly by two more. The massive blast ripped upward through the crowded decks and completely destroyed the ship's control room, known as the pilothouse. The wooden boat quickly turned into a floating inferno. Survivors had to make a terrible choice: stay on the burning ship and die in the flames, or jump into the freezing, fast-moving floodwaters of the Mississippi River.

Since the boat only had one lifeboat—which quickly sank under the weight of panicked men—hundreds of weakened soldiers drowned or froze to death. One survivor remembered the horror, saying the river became "black with men, their heads bobbing up like corks." Ships passing by, like the Bostona, rushed to pull people from the icy water, and local Memphis hospitals worked hard to treat the survivors. But when the nightmare was over, an estimated 1,164 to 1,800 people were dead, making it the worst marine disaster in U.S. history.

With so many lives lost, you might wonder why the Sultana disaster is ignored today. The main reason is bad timing. The steamboat exploded in late April 1865, just days after the Civil War ended and President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. At the exact time the Sultana was burning, the nation's newspapers and public attention were completely focused on the hunt for Lincoln's killer, John Wilkes Booth, who had been shot just the day before.

On top of that, the American public was completely exhausted by war. For four long years, people had read daily newspaper reports of massive death tolls and bloody battles. The country was deeply traumatized and wanted to put the war and all of its related tragedies behind them. Because of this, the deadliest maritime disaster in U.S. history was pushed to the back pages of newspapers and quickly faded from the national memory.

Although the Sultana is largely forgotten by the public, it did change maritime history. It highlighted the need for the government to establish stronger safety rules for ships. It directly led to the Act of 1871, which established the Steamboat Inspection Service. This organization laid the groundwork for the U.S. Coast Guard's modern marine safety programs. Today, the tragic story of the Sultana serves as a reminder of what happens when profit and greed are valued over human life. It is time we remember the Sultana and honor the thousands of soldiers who survived the brutal horrors of war, only to lose their lives on the journey home.