For a more detailed and scholarly history, see Susan Pentlin & Rebecca Schroeder’s article in MFSJ.
In 1903, at an English Club meeting at the University of Missouri, a student from Clinton County, Missouri, sang a version of a ballad that the faculty advisor recognized as a variant of one in Child’s English and Scottish Ballads. When the students assured him that many such songs were still sung in Missouri, he enlisted their aid in collecting them. During the next three years, the English Club initiated a collection that their advisor, Henry Marvin Belden, continued for over three decades, and in 1940 he published Ballads and Songs Collected by the Missouri Folk-Lore Society. When the Missouri Folk-Lore Society was established in 1906 with Belden as Secretary, officers and members included residents from throughout the state, including Missouri’s most prominent folklorist, Mary Alicia Owen of St. Joseph. The stated purpose of the new Society was the study of “Folk-Lore in the widest sense of the term, including customs, institutions, superstitions, signs, legends, language and literature of all races, so far as they are found in the State of Missouri,” a statement echoing the advice Charles Godfrey Leland had given in an 1889 letter to Owen about her work among the Mesquakie Indians.
Owen was elected President of MFS in 1908, and in 1909, at the third annual meeting of the Society in Columbia, the 63 members included residents of Washington DC, Chicago, New York, and other states as well as Missouri. Publications by Belden and other MFS members in JAF and other journals brought national attention to the Society. At the request of L. W. Payne, who with John A. Lomax founded the Texas Folklore Society, Belden sent copies of several of the leaflets he and Miss Owen had prepared for MFS. A comparison of the constitution and early publications of the two societies shows many similarities, according to F. E. Abernethy, historian of the Texas Society.
It was not until 1913, at a meeting in St. Louis attended by George Lyman Kittredge, that the members of the Missouri Folk-Lore Society were persuaded to associate formally with the American Folklore Society, as other state societies were doing. Categories of membership were established distinguishing “professed folk-lorists” (those belonging to AFS) from “antiquarians and collectors who approach the subject from the point of view of state history or local history.”
As attendance and membership declined, Belden suggested that MFS members meet with the Missouri State Teachers Association. Accordingly, MFS became a department of MSTA, and at the 1916 meeting in St. Louis there was a standing-room-only audience at the program and a large group at the “folklore supper.” However, World War I and the flu epidemic weakened the Society, and its 1920 meeting in Kansas City was the last for many years to come.
Other collectors began working in Missouri. Vance Randolph collected in the Ozarks in the 1920s and 1930s. Joseph M. Carrière and Ward Dorrance gathered and published French folk tales and songs in Ste. Genevieve and the Old Mines community in the 1930s. In the late 1940s R. P. Christeson began recording old-time fiddle tunes in Missouri and other states. While a student at the University of Missouri, Loman Cansler discovered that songs in the Belden, Randolph, and Sandburg collections were still sung by his family and friends in Dallas County, so he too began collecting. In the 1950s Max Hunter, a Springfield businessman, started recording ballads and songs on trips around the Ozarks. The Carrière, Christeson, Cansler, and Hunter materials constitute major American collections.
In the 1970s others developed an interest in the collection and study of Missouri’s folklore, including the Missouri Friends of the Folk Arts in St. Louis; Gordon McCann in Springfield; John W. Roberts, then a professor at the University of Missouri; Adolf E. Schroeder, who established a German Folklore Project in Missouri; and Cathy Barton, a folk musician and student at Stephens College. In response to the need for some means of bringing together the knowledge of these researchers, the Missouri Folklore Society was reactivated in 1977. Roberts was the first President and later served as Secretary, publishing in that capacity the 1979 Missouri Folklore Society Journal. In 1981 Donald Lance, who first became interested in the field in Texas, was elected Secretary and editor of publications, a position in which he continued to serve until his sudden death in 2003.
The 1980s brought a number of folklorists to the state-Erika Brady, John Miles Foley, Elaine Lawless (later president of the American Folklore Society, as were members Jan Harold Brunvand and Norma Cantu), Sandy Rikoon, Howard Marshall, Ray Brassieur, Dana Everts-Boehm, and Prahlad Folly-all welcome additions. In 1996, with Ray Brassieur serving as president, MFS celebrated the 90th anniversary of its founding and the 20th anniversary of its reactivation.
The work of the Society continues, with volunteers from every area of the state, some associated with academic institutions but many more who simply have an enduring interest in Missouri traditions. Membership peaked at around 350 in the early 1990s. the Society holds annual meetings, publishes an annual journal and quarterly (later semi-annual) newsletters, and maintains a website including opportunities for members to share their own work. The Society also awards prizes for student papers related to folklife and folklore.
For further information, contact Missouri Folklore Society, P. O. Box 1757, Columbia, MO 65205 or email the webmaster.
Updated from version by Rebecca B. Schroeder, MFS Archivist
Since its 1977 re-activation, the Society has met annually in late October or early November, ideally visiting all quadrants of the state, and returning regularly to the center.
1990 Hannibal
1991 Flat River
1992 Hermann
1993 Kansas City
1994 Arrow Rock
1995 Trenton
1996 Columbia
1997 Stockton
1998 Hannibal
1999 Sikeston
2000 Fulton
2001 Kansas City
2002 Potosi
2003 Kirksville
2004 Cape Girardeau
2005 Springfield
2006 Columbia
2007 Jefferson City
2008 Hannibal
2009 Boonville
2010 Neosho
2011 Ste. Genevieve
2012 Defiance (Daniel Boone Home)
2013 Potosi (Trout Lodge)
2014 Boonville (Casino)
2015 Jefferson City
2016 Kirksville
2017 Sikeston
2016 Washington
2019 Marshall
2020 online: pandemic
2021 online: pandemic
2022 Hannibal
2023 Moberly