Certified Archivist David Moore, associate director of the Western Historical Manuscript Collection, addresses the Marshall Writers Guild during a presentation at the Marshall Public Library, Thursday, Oct. 18. (Kathy Fairchild/Democrat-News) [Click to enlarge]

If you’ve got a stash of letters from your late great-grandmother to her sweetheart stationed in France during World War I, David Moore would like to talk to you.

A certified archivist, Moore was in Marshall on Thursday, Oct. 18, for a presentation at the Marshall Writers Guild.

He has been associate director of the Western Historical Manuscript Collection (WHMC) at Ellis Library on the campus of University of Missouri-Columbia since 2002.

Using the State Historical Society of Missouri’s collection of documents as a springboard, WHMC was established at the University of Missouri in 1943 with funds from a Rockefeller Foundation grant.

Today, the collection is housed at Columbia and the other campuses in Kansas City, Rolla and St. Louis.

The goal of WHMC is to collect, preserve and share primary source materials documenting the history of the state of Missouri and the region.

Moore described a “primary source” as photographs, newspapers, journals and diaries and letters contemporary to the event described.

That’s where your great-grandmother’s letters come in. Those letters are a contemporary view of the events of “The Great War” and how it was viewed by those directly affected by it.

It’s documents like these that form the backbone of the collection. Moore pointed out, “We’re just collecting stories.”

Moore’s presentation included copies of several local documents such as a letter dated Sept. 22, 1862, from Francis Audsley, in Marshall with his military unit, to his wife, Harriet, on their farm in southern Saline County.

Pregnant at the time, and already caring for their two-year-old child, Harriet was alone on the farm.

Entries from a dairy of 1918 spoke of deaths from the “Spanish Flu.”

And it’s not just personal records. Business and commercial records are also of great interest.

A letter from the Marshall Chamber of Commerce to Helen Stephens, the “Fulton Flash,” winner of two gold medals at the Berlin Olympics of 1936, expressed the Chamber’s regret that a lack of funds made it impossible for them to bring her to Marshall with her traveling basketball team. The letter is dated April 12, 1938.

Newspaper ads shortly after World War I show the Marshall Flying School, offering “industrial” flying lessons for $450. And funeral home records from the Walker Funeral Home, owned by Paris M. Walker, are part of the collection, too.

Although the collection always prefers to receive documents in pristine condition, that’s not always possible. They’ve received documents of all kinds, some in lovely albums, but some in trashbags.

Maybe the most important role of WHMC, after preserving the records, is sharing them.

The collection is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. and until 9 p.m. on Tuesdays when University classes are in session. They are closed on University holidays.

At the Columbia campus, the collection comprises more than 17,000 linear feet of documents containing over 42,500,000 pages; 6,400 rolls of microfilm; 31,000 images; and 15,000 hours of audio and video recordings. In total, the collection contains more than 42,650 linear feet of records.

Moore clearly enjoys his work. Passionate about history himself, he said he is “fortunate to have so many dedicated coworkers who share the passion for preserving history.”

Contact Kathy Fairchild at

marshallhealth@socket.net