Entry from
January 18, 2005
I’m from Missouri—Show Me (summary)
Gerald Cohen is a professor at the University of Missouri-Rolla. He started the research on "Big Apple," and he also started the research on "I'm from Missouri, show me."
The standard story is that the state motto was coined/popularized by Congressman Willard Vandiver at a meeting in Philadelphia in 1899. That's wrong.
First, the Philadelphia meeting was in 1900, not 1899. I checked. Second, "show me" was already popular by that time.
"Show me" is dated from 1894 in an Omaha, Nebraska newspaper. In 1898, people from Missouri wore "show me" buttons to the Trans-Mississippi exhibition in Omaha, Nebraska. Also, in the summer of 1898, a "Show Me" song (the first of several) was copyrighted.
The State of Missouri is aware of my work, but the web page is still incorrect and outdated. I'll "show you" here.
Missouri Secretary of State website
Why Is Missouri Called the "Show-Me" State?
There are a number of stories and legends behind Missouri's sobriquet "Show-Me" state. The slogan is not official, but is common throughout the state and is used on Missouri license plates.
The most widely known legend attributes the phrase to Missouri's U.S. Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver, who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1897 to 1903. While a member of the U.S. House Committee on Naval Affairs, Vandiver attended an 1899 naval banquet in Philadelphia. In a speech there, he declared, "I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me." Regardless of whether Vandiver coined the phrase, it is certain that his speech helped to popularize the saying.
Other versions of the "Show-Me" legend place the slogan's origin in the mining town of Leadville, Colorado. There, the phrase was first employed as a term of ridicule and reproach. A miner's strike had been in progress for some time in the mid-1890s, and a number of miners from the lead districts of southwest Missouri had been imported to take the places of the strikers. The Joplin miners were unfamiliar with Colorado mining methods and required frequent instructions. Pit bosses began saying, "That man is from Missouri. You'll have to show him."
However the slogan originated, it has since passed into a different meaning entirely, and is now used to indicate the stalwart, conservative, noncredulous character of Missourians.
Resources:
Rossiter, Phyllis. "I'm from Missouri--you'll have to show me." Rural Missouri, Volume 42, Number 3, March 1989, page 16.
Official Manual of the State of Missouri, 1979-1980, page 1486.
28 October 1894, Sunday World-Herald (Omaha, NE), pg. 10:
Johnson (John S. Johnson, a bicycle rider --ed.) says that he can cover a mile in 1:30 flat, but being from Missouri he will have to show me.
EATON.
13 November 1894, Morning World-Herald (Omaha, NE), pg. 3:
They're From Missouri.
Fowler, Dick & Walker, against whom P. H. Fotheringham has brought a $10,000 damage suit, are from Missouri and want to be shown. They have filed in the district court a motion for a more specified statement on the part of Fotheringham.
23 December 1894, Sunday World-Herald (Omaha, NE), pg. 18:
A few days after that "a tall, long, lank, underfed, wall-eyed, slab-sided, hatchet-faced girl" from the state where you have to "show me" came up to the window with an "I say, mister, what's the fare down home again?"
1 December 1895, Sunday World-Herald (Omaha, NE), pg. 19:
Your uncle will not believe that Omaha will be in the Western league until along in the shank of next season, when a team with the word "Omaha" emblazoned upon the shirts of players in actual service can be shown to him. And he is not from Missouri, either.
21 February 1896, Sunday World-Herald (Omaha, NE), pg. 3:
This ballot was also made formal and Mr. (W. H. --ed.) Bradley was called for. He was bashful, but the convention howled until he mounted the platform declaring, "I'm from Missouri and have to be shown."
2 May 1897, Philadelphia (PA) Times, pg. 13, col. 7:
HE HAD NEVER
SEEN A TUNNEL
A MISSOURIAN'S BIG SCARE IN THE
MOUNTAINS.
From a Correspondent of THE TIMES.
COLORADO SPRINGS, April 26.
"I'm from Missouri, and they'll have to show me."
(...)
(The same text is in the following reprint a week later. The below is more accessible to most through ProQuest digitized newspapers -- ed.)
9 May 1897, Washington Post, pg. 27:
HE NEVER SAW A TUNNEL.
So the Man from Missouri Leaped Headlong from a Train.
From the Philadelphia Times.
"I'm from Missouri, and they'll have to show me."
That is what John Duffer, of Pike County, Missouri, remarked as he was being patched up in the office of Dr. Creighton at Manitou. His face and hands were badly scrateched where they had come in contact with the sharp gravel, there was a bruise over one eye where his head has struck against a fragment of Pike's Peak, one elbow felt "like a tarnation wildcat had clawed it," and there was a general feeling of soreness "pretty much everywhere," as he explained it to the doctor, but he was alive and thankful.
John had jumped from the platform of a Colorado Midland passenger train at the entrance to the first tunnel above Manitou, while laboring under a mistake as to the destination of the train, which appeared to be plunging into the mountain side.
"You don't catch me lettin' 'em run me into the ground with any of their gol darned trains, when I've got a through ticket to Cripple Creek in my pocket," he remarked as the doctor took another stitch in his scalp and adjusted an artistic court plaster shingle on the swelling dome over his right eye. "I'm pretty badly peeled up, but you bet I'm still on top, and that's where I'm going to stay." And John Duffer took a good-sized bite out
of a mammoth piece of navy plug which he dug up out of his pocket and relapsed into momentary silence, though his jaws worked faster than ever.
"You see, Doc," said the Missourian, as he deluged the gas log in the doctor's fireplace with the overflow from his lips, "I was a-going over to Cripple Creek to see what those gold mines look like, where they shovel up the stuff into a wagon and let her go at that, and find chunks of gold in the rocks. I had my grip and a bucket of grub in the car, and just after the train left the depot I went out on the platform to look at the mountains. Down on one side was a holler, and up on tother side was a hill that I
couldn't see to the top of, and on all sides was mountains, and I couldn't see how the train was ever going to dodge them all. The little shelf the train was running on kept wiggling through them hills like a snake in a plow field, and then I looked ahead and saw where a hill had been split plumb down to the ground to let the railroad through, and that was all right, because I could see daylight on the other side. And then when the train went through that split in the hill it switched around kinder to one side, and I could see the track ahead of the engine, and then I saw a big white mountain all covered with snow sticking clear up into the clouds, and nobody knows how much farther, and the next thing I knowed the engine give a screech like she was most scared to death, and I looked quick and the whole business was going plunk into a hole in the ground. And then I jumped. Came near getting killed, but I fooled them that trip. You don't catch me running up against any game that I don't know nothing about, and I ain't going into anything that I don't know the way out of. Then I came down town to get patched up, and I'm going to Cripple Creek some other way, even if I have to walk."
"And what became of the train?" asked the doctor, who had been feeling of Duffer's ribs to se if they were all in place. "Didn't they stop for you?"
"Stop nothing. The last I saw of the darned thing it was still going into the hole and I didn't care whether it ever stopped or not. I wasn't on it. Say, do you reckon I could get my bucket back if they get them out?"
It took considerable time and the testimony of several witnesses to convince Mr. Duffer that the entire train and its contents were not hopelessly buried in the interior of Pike's Peak, and quite a little crowd accompanied him to the station, where Agent Dunaway telegraphed to Cascade to return one lunch pail and grip labeled John Duffer, Pike County, Mo.
And as he left the station to fill up on "free soda biling right out of
the crowd" Mr. Duffer explained, once more:
"When the train went into that hole I thought we'd never see daylight again, and my only chance was to jump, and so I jumped. I'm from Missouri, and you'll have to show me!"
The standard story is that the state motto was coined/popularized by Congressman Willard Vandiver at a meeting in Philadelphia in 1899. That's wrong.
First, the Philadelphia meeting was in 1900, not 1899. I checked. Second, "show me" was already popular by that time.
"Show me" is dated from 1894 in an Omaha, Nebraska newspaper. In 1898, people from Missouri wore "show me" buttons to the Trans-Mississippi exhibition in Omaha, Nebraska. Also, in the summer of 1898, a "Show Me" song (the first of several) was copyrighted.
The State of Missouri is aware of my work, but the web page is still incorrect and outdated. I'll "show you" here.
Missouri Secretary of State website
Why Is Missouri Called the "Show-Me" State?
There are a number of stories and legends behind Missouri's sobriquet "Show-Me" state. The slogan is not official, but is common throughout the state and is used on Missouri license plates.
The most widely known legend attributes the phrase to Missouri's U.S. Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver, who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1897 to 1903. While a member of the U.S. House Committee on Naval Affairs, Vandiver attended an 1899 naval banquet in Philadelphia. In a speech there, he declared, "I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me." Regardless of whether Vandiver coined the phrase, it is certain that his speech helped to popularize the saying.
Other versions of the "Show-Me" legend place the slogan's origin in the mining town of Leadville, Colorado. There, the phrase was first employed as a term of ridicule and reproach. A miner's strike had been in progress for some time in the mid-1890s, and a number of miners from the lead districts of southwest Missouri had been imported to take the places of the strikers. The Joplin miners were unfamiliar with Colorado mining methods and required frequent instructions. Pit bosses began saying, "That man is from Missouri. You'll have to show him."
However the slogan originated, it has since passed into a different meaning entirely, and is now used to indicate the stalwart, conservative, noncredulous character of Missourians.
Resources:
Rossiter, Phyllis. "I'm from Missouri--you'll have to show me." Rural Missouri, Volume 42, Number 3, March 1989, page 16.
Official Manual of the State of Missouri, 1979-1980, page 1486.
28 October 1894, Sunday World-Herald (Omaha, NE), pg. 10:
Johnson (John S. Johnson, a bicycle rider --ed.) says that he can cover a mile in 1:30 flat, but being from Missouri he will have to show me.
EATON.
13 November 1894, Morning World-Herald (Omaha, NE), pg. 3:
They're From Missouri.
Fowler, Dick & Walker, against whom P. H. Fotheringham has brought a $10,000 damage suit, are from Missouri and want to be shown. They have filed in the district court a motion for a more specified statement on the part of Fotheringham.
23 December 1894, Sunday World-Herald (Omaha, NE), pg. 18:
A few days after that "a tall, long, lank, underfed, wall-eyed, slab-sided, hatchet-faced girl" from the state where you have to "show me" came up to the window with an "I say, mister, what's the fare down home again?"
1 December 1895, Sunday World-Herald (Omaha, NE), pg. 19:
Your uncle will not believe that Omaha will be in the Western league until along in the shank of next season, when a team with the word "Omaha" emblazoned upon the shirts of players in actual service can be shown to him. And he is not from Missouri, either.
21 February 1896, Sunday World-Herald (Omaha, NE), pg. 3:
This ballot was also made formal and Mr. (W. H. --ed.) Bradley was called for. He was bashful, but the convention howled until he mounted the platform declaring, "I'm from Missouri and have to be shown."
2 May 1897, Philadelphia (PA) Times, pg. 13, col. 7:
HE HAD NEVER
SEEN A TUNNEL
A MISSOURIAN'S BIG SCARE IN THE
MOUNTAINS.
From a Correspondent of THE TIMES.
COLORADO SPRINGS, April 26.
"I'm from Missouri, and they'll have to show me."
(...)
(The same text is in the following reprint a week later. The below is more accessible to most through ProQuest digitized newspapers -- ed.)
9 May 1897, Washington Post, pg. 27:
HE NEVER SAW A TUNNEL.
So the Man from Missouri Leaped Headlong from a Train.
From the Philadelphia Times.
"I'm from Missouri, and they'll have to show me."
That is what John Duffer, of Pike County, Missouri, remarked as he was being patched up in the office of Dr. Creighton at Manitou. His face and hands were badly scrateched where they had come in contact with the sharp gravel, there was a bruise over one eye where his head has struck against a fragment of Pike's Peak, one elbow felt "like a tarnation wildcat had clawed it," and there was a general feeling of soreness "pretty much everywhere," as he explained it to the doctor, but he was alive and thankful.
John had jumped from the platform of a Colorado Midland passenger train at the entrance to the first tunnel above Manitou, while laboring under a mistake as to the destination of the train, which appeared to be plunging into the mountain side.
"You don't catch me lettin' 'em run me into the ground with any of their gol darned trains, when I've got a through ticket to Cripple Creek in my pocket," he remarked as the doctor took another stitch in his scalp and adjusted an artistic court plaster shingle on the swelling dome over his right eye. "I'm pretty badly peeled up, but you bet I'm still on top, and that's where I'm going to stay." And John Duffer took a good-sized bite out
of a mammoth piece of navy plug which he dug up out of his pocket and relapsed into momentary silence, though his jaws worked faster than ever.
"You see, Doc," said the Missourian, as he deluged the gas log in the doctor's fireplace with the overflow from his lips, "I was a-going over to Cripple Creek to see what those gold mines look like, where they shovel up the stuff into a wagon and let her go at that, and find chunks of gold in the rocks. I had my grip and a bucket of grub in the car, and just after the train left the depot I went out on the platform to look at the mountains. Down on one side was a holler, and up on tother side was a hill that I
couldn't see to the top of, and on all sides was mountains, and I couldn't see how the train was ever going to dodge them all. The little shelf the train was running on kept wiggling through them hills like a snake in a plow field, and then I looked ahead and saw where a hill had been split plumb down to the ground to let the railroad through, and that was all right, because I could see daylight on the other side. And then when the train went through that split in the hill it switched around kinder to one side, and I could see the track ahead of the engine, and then I saw a big white mountain all covered with snow sticking clear up into the clouds, and nobody knows how much farther, and the next thing I knowed the engine give a screech like she was most scared to death, and I looked quick and the whole business was going plunk into a hole in the ground. And then I jumped. Came near getting killed, but I fooled them that trip. You don't catch me running up against any game that I don't know nothing about, and I ain't going into anything that I don't know the way out of. Then I came down town to get patched up, and I'm going to Cripple Creek some other way, even if I have to walk."
"And what became of the train?" asked the doctor, who had been feeling of Duffer's ribs to se if they were all in place. "Didn't they stop for you?"
"Stop nothing. The last I saw of the darned thing it was still going into the hole and I didn't care whether it ever stopped or not. I wasn't on it. Say, do you reckon I could get my bucket back if they get them out?"
It took considerable time and the testimony of several witnesses to convince Mr. Duffer that the entire train and its contents were not hopelessly buried in the interior of Pike's Peak, and quite a little crowd accompanied him to the station, where Agent Dunaway telegraphed to Cascade to return one lunch pail and grip labeled John Duffer, Pike County, Mo.
And as he left the station to fill up on "free soda biling right out of
the crowd" Mr. Duffer explained, once more:
"When the train went into that hole I thought we'd never see daylight again, and my only chance was to jump, and so I jumped. I'm from Missouri, and you'll have to show me!"
Posted by Barry Popik
Nicknames of Other Places • I'm From Missouri. Show Me. • (0) Comments • Tuesday, January 18, 2005 • Permalink
Nicknames of Other Places • I'm From Missouri. Show Me. • (0) Comments • Tuesday, January 18, 2005 • Permalink