Information Sheet

 

 

R         Landrum, Richard Hundley, 1834-1919.

374                  The Immigrant’s Guide, 1882.

                                    One folder.

 

 

 

This is a promotional newspaper published by R. H. Landrum and Euphrates Boucher at Mount Vernon, Lawrence County, Missouri.  The publication contains articles promoting agri­cul­ture and stock-raising in southwestern Missouri and the opportunities for immigrants to Law­rence County.

 

The Immigrant’s Guide contains articles on rural and farm life, advertisements by local busi­nesses, and promotional material on Lawrence County.  It is typical of the advertising which was produced to stimulate settlement in southern Missouri in the late nineteenth cen­tury.  At­tor­ney Richard Hundley Landrum and newspaperman Euphrates Boucher published The Guide.  Their stated purpose was to ensure for Lawrence County a share of the immigra­tion to southwest­ern Mis­souri.  They billed The Guide as the only newspaper in the region de­voted almost en­tirely to that end, and claimed to have sent out “near 2,000” copies to subscrib­ers in February 1882.  The annual subscription was fifty cents.

 

The first page of The Guide includes extracts of articles on farming and agriculture, most of which were reprinted from Missouri newspapers and handbooks and from periodicals such as Coleman’s Rural World.  The business cards of various businessmen also occur on the front page.  The inside pages contain articles on schools and business in Lawrence County, which is charac­ter­ized as an area where oppor­tunities abound for the industrious homeseeker, and as a place where tradespeople were busy but where the doctors and lawyers had little to occupy themselves.

 

The last page is entirely devoted to advertisements, the largest of which is that of the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway.  The ad­vertisement features a map of the railroad line showing stations at Logan, Aurora, Verona, and Peirce City in the southern part of Lawrence County.  The railroad offered inexpensive farms and pleasant homes, and offered free trans­portation to south­western Missouri.  The railroad company excepted, most of the advertisers in the guide were busi­ness­men at Mount Vernon.  Only a few Peirce City businesses are fea­tured.

 

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