High Noon: Hunting for Treasure in St. Louis History

Researching local history is like doing archaeology: you dig through layers of material to uncover treasure—in this case, previously undiscovered details about a person or event that bring your story to life. And that’s important because good history is, fundamentally, a series of factual but exciting stories that illuminate people’s motives and actions. Without such stories, history can become dry, even boring. Digging for those nuggets may sound tedious; you end up reading old newspapers, letters, journals, and numerous meeting minutes. Sometimes, those searches are fruitless. But there are also “aha” moments that make all this work worthwhile—and it’s some of those moments that O’Connor will talk about.