In the Beginning was Kirkwood: The Impact of Critical Events on Families in St. Louis's first suburb and the St. Louis area, 1853 to 1940

This is an original history that is based on the collective biographies of several thousand people who lived in the St. Louis area between 1853 and 1940. The author attempts to define authentic history as the reaction of families to critical events and cultural trends. It is a history based predominantly on the lives of people who resided in four different areas of St. Louis: the railroad suburbs of Kirkwood and Maplewood and the residents of the wealthiest and poorest wards in St. Louis. As residents of the only incorporated town in St. Louis County between 1853 and 1894, the people of Kirkwood, Missouri were eyewitnesses to important economic and social changes that included the introduction and end to slavery, the damaging long-term effects of the Panic of 1873, and the economic and social spillover from St. Louis as it became the fourth largest city in America by 1900. This history attempts to portray these changes from the perspective of most residents rather than from the viewpoint of a privileged few. There are accounts sprinkled throughout the book about people such as Samuel Murta, the "flophouse king," whose throat was slit with a hacksaw blade and whose murderer was killed in a machine gun battle with police. Then there is Albert S. Kinyon, a powerful and effective mayor for Kirkwood whose life was almost derailed when he accidentally hit and killed a two-year-old child while driving in the Central West End of St. Louis. Still, there are other stories like the one about the artist who absconded with all the donated money for a sculpture meant to memorialize Kirkwood's young soldiers killed in World War I. Scandals, robberies, murders - these stories are all part of the real history of Kirkwood and the St. Louis area. The author's extensive use of US censuses, military records, church records, city directories, birth records, mortality records, marriage records, newspaper accounts, Google Books, family histories, ancestry.com, subdivision records, business records, student records, histories of famous St. Louisans, books on Kirkwood and St. Louis, social club directories, city records, biographies, interviews, and other resources make this a truly original manuscript. Information culled from these sources formed a history that is unique and, oftentimes, unknown.