Boone County Historical Society was established in 1924. Located in

Columbia, Missouri Columbia is a city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It is the county seat of Boone County and home to the University of Missouri. Founded in 1821, it is the principal city of the five-county Columbia metropolitan area. It is Missouri's fourth ...

, United States, the Boone County Historical Museum has been collecting, preserving and exhibiting artifacts and records of the people of

Boone County, Missouri Boone County is located in the U.S. state of Missouri. Centrally located in Mid-Missouri, its county seat is Columbia, Missouri's fourth-largest city and location of the University of Missouri. As of the 2020 census, the population was 183,61 ...

. The campus includes a

history museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these i ...

, an

art gallery An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The lon ...

, a genealogical library, and a number of historic structures. The museum owns historical photographs spanning back to the late 19th century, revealing a Columbia that many people have never seen. The historical society and museum is a cultural and arts destination for Columbia, Missouri and surrounding communities.

Walters-Boone County Museum

The Walters-Boone County Museum was established in 1990 by the Boone County Historical Society. Through the efforts of the historical society's board of directors, a large campaign was launched, which allowed the official construction of the museum to start in 1989. The Walters-Boone County Museum has two major exhibit halls and other display areas which make a total of 5,500 square feet of historical exhibit space. The museum also houses a nearly 10,000 square feet of climate-control vaults and storage space.

The Montminy Gallery

The 2,800-square-foot Montminy Art Gallery exhibits local, regional and state artists of importance and interest to the Boone County community. The Montminy Gallery was built in 1993 after the death of longtime Columbia artist and

University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou, MU, or Missouri) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus Universit ...

professor Emeritus Elizabeth "Tracy" Montminy. A wide array of art mediums can be found rotating every eight to twelve weeks. Some of the more popular mediums include paintings, photography and sculptures. The society is the home to the pianist John W.

Blind Boone John William "Blind" Boone (May 17, 1864 – October 4, 1927) was an American pianist and composer of ragtime music. Early life Boone was born in a Federal militia camp near Miami, Missouri, May 17, 1864, to a contraband slave, Rachel, who used ...

, 125-year-old Chickering

grand piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

. After belonging to the Walters-Boone Historical Museum for decades, the original piano was hardly playable and continued to deteriorate as a museum piece for the historical society. The century-old piano can now be found as a centerpiece of the Montminy Art Gallery.

Boone County History & Culture Center

In 1988, local businessman Raul Walters made a contribution to honor and in memory of his parents, Bucky and Lala, to the construction of a new museum building for the society. In return, the society included the Walters name in the finished museum's name - The Walters Boone County Historical Museum & Visitors Center. In 1993 an estate gift left by famed artist, Tracy Montminy, allowed for the addition of a 6,000-square-foot space to the west end of the original museum building. The 3,000-square-foot ground floor was dedicated to collections storage and the 3,000-square-foot top floor became the Montminy Art Gallery. Around 2009, the organization began to refer to its venues collectively as the Boone County Historical Museum & Galleries. That was an effort to better describe both the history galleries and the Montminy Art Gallery, as well as the newly built Riverhorse Pavilion. In the years since 1993, not only has the organization produced over 100 major art exhibits, but has also produced dozens of professional music concerts, book readings and other cultural programming. In 2016, the board of directors enacted a long-term plan to improve the organization by changing the mission statement and name. Deciding to better embrace its role as a culture and arts center, and in addition to its long-time role as a history museum, the board of directors voted unanimously to rename the main building and its ancillary venues (consisting of the Montminy Gallery, The Village at Boone Junction, the Maplewood House and the Riverhorse Pavilion), The Boone County History & Culture Center.

Historic houses and buildings

Historic Maplewood House

The Maplewood House was built in 1877 by husband and wife Slater Ensor Lenoir and Margaret Bradform Lenior, each coming from Boone County pioneer families. The house and farm received its name Maplewood because it was located in a grove of large sugar maple trees. Surviving for over 139 years, the Maplewood House been visited by thousands. The historical house was built with homemade brick. Showing influence of the

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian R ...

architectural style. With an original T-shaped layout the home was remodeled in 1891. Some of the construction consisted of enclosing the sleeping decks along the south side of the home and adding an additional wing. Some of the architectural features of the home include:

corbels In architecture, a corbel is a structural piece of stone, wood or metal jutting from a wall to carry a superincumbent weight, a type of bracket. A corbel is a solid piece of material in the wall, whereas a console is a piece applied to the st ...

, arched windows, bay windows, front balcony and oriel window. The original farm included 427 acres. The land included: a large pond, utility house, hay barn and a large barn. The animal barn was reconstructed to a summer theater playhouse, called the Maplewood Barn Theater after the property was purchased by the City of Columbia. It was lost to a fire in 2010 and rebuilt and dedicated in 2012. The City of Columbia purchased 60 acres of the farmland including the Maplewood house in 1970. On November 8, 1970 the park was formally dedicated and renamed the Frank G. Nifong Memorial Park and today is called Historic Nifong Park in recognition of the work of historic preservation undertaken by the City of Columbia Parks and Recreation Department and the Boone County Historical Society.

Village of Boone Junction

The village of Boone Junction contains a number of structures relocated from their original locations. These include: * Gordon-Collins Log Cabin – In 1822, David Gordon,

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia to ...

settler, built the Gordon-Collins Log Cabin. Serving as his families temporary home while a large house was being built. The cabin was later used a slave home and a place for hired laborers to stay. Currently, visitors can view tools that were common during the new frontier. Some of the tools include:

loom A loom is a device used to weave cloth and tapestry. The basic purpose of any loom is to hold the warp threads under tension to facilitate the interweaving of the weft threads. The precise shape of the loom and its mechanics may vary, but th ...

s, spinning wheels, candle molds and cookware. It was moved from its original location in what is today's Stephens Lake Park * McQuitty House – In 1910 Luther McQuitty, an African American contractor built this home. Being unique for its vernacular "Shotgun" style of architecture, it is one of few surviving homes of its style. It was moved from its original location in Columbia at the corner of Garth and Worley. * Easley Store - moved from

Easley, Missouri Easley is an unincorporated community in Boone County, in the U.S. state of Missouri. The last building remaining in Easley, a general store, was moved to the Boone County Historical Society and reconstructed. Easley is on both the Missouri River ...

Collections

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

In Missouri *The Columbia Daily Tribune Archives 1907-2015 * Boone County Fire Protection District Dedication Exhibit * Concerned Student 1950 Protest and Hunger Strike ( 2015-16 University of Missouri protests) by Jon Luvelli * 150 Years of Boone County Education * The Sporting Life: Hunting, Fishing & Conservation in Boone County * The Civil War Letters of Joseph Cooper Babb by Joseph Babb * Westhoff Photo Collection by Joe Douglass, Henry Holborn, and Wesley Blackmore * Postcards from the St. Louis World's Fair & Exposition

References

{{authority control 1924 establishments in Missouri Organizations established in 1924 Non-profit organizations based in Missouri Historical societies of the United States

Historical Society A historical society (sometimes also preservation society) is an organization dedicated to preserving, collecting, researching, and interpreting historical information or items. Originally, these societies were created as a way to help future gen ...

History of Columbia, Missouri African-American history in Columbia, Missouri Libraries in Columbia, Missouri Museums in Columbia, Missouri Historical societies in Missouri