Information Sheet

 

 

R         McCormick, John Steele, 1906-2001.

877                  Collection, 1809-2004.

One hundred twelve folders and fifteen volumes.

 

THIS COLLECTION IS IN OFF-SITE STORAGE. AT LEAST TWO DAYS' ADVANCE NOTICE IS REQUIRED FOR ITS USE BY RESEARCHERS.

 

 

These are the personal papers, correspondence, research, and writings of genealogist and local historian John Steele McCormick, a descen­dant of Cyrus Russell and Rebecca Pease Russell of Iron County, Missouri.  Primary topics are Crawford County, the Forest Hill neighborhood, the Russell and McCormick families, and the Goodman Wonder Show.

 

John Steele McCormick, the son of James W. McCormick and Florence Russell McCor­mick, was born in St. Louis on 5 March 1906.  He was raised on his family’s Crawford County poultry farm at Forest Hill near Bourbon, Missouri, and attended the Forest Hill School and Grover Cleveland High School in St. Louis.  He attended Oklahoma City College, 1925-1927.  He returned to Franklin County without a degree due to economic circumstances, but not before making a sight-seeing journey through fifteen southern states.  Later, he graduated from the Uni­versity of Texas at Austin, re­ceived a master’s degree in education from the University of Wyo­ming (1948), and a master’s in Spanish Arts from the University of San Nicolas de Hidalgo, Mexico (1951).

 

McCormick taught school at Forest Hill in 1932-1936, the same school he attended as a child, and at Union in 1937.  He supplemented his income by playing accordion in the Rhythm Aces, a three-piece musical group formed with friends Gene Dixon and Austin Cowan at Bour­bon.  McCormick joined the carnival for the seasons of 1937-1940, taking a position as musician in Eddie Comstock’s “Fantazma” production of the Goodman Wonder Show.  He also played in the orchestra of Haury [sic] Mac and His Music, touring extensively throughout the upper Mid­west with these traveling shows.  He relocated to Colorado and Wyoming in 1939, teaching school at Dixon, Wyoming, and working for the U. S. Forest Service.  He enlisted in the U. S. Navy’s “Sea­bees” construction force until May 1942 and served on Adak Island in the Aleutians and on Oki­nawa.  McCormick resumed teaching in Wyoming in 1946, supervising schools at Ranchester and Elk Mountain.  In 1957 he removed to California and taught high school at Beaumont and Ban­ning until retirement in 1972.   McCormick died in Cherry Valley, California, on 10 October 2001.  His ashes are interred in the McCormick plot in the Bourbon Cemetery.

 

A teacher by profession, McCormick was also a local historian and genealogist.  Among his earliest writings were historical sketches of Forest Hill submitted to the Bourbon newspaper in 1935.  Those articles, edited and revised, formed the core of McCormick’s History of Forest Hill and Vicinity  (Pacific, Mo.: Pacific Press, 1969).  The McCormick collection includes some of his historical and genealogical work, but also his personal papers and correspondence, genealogical notes and family group charts, photographs and photograph albums, and several scrapbooks con­taining a wide variety of ephemeral materials pertaining to relating to the Russell, Guild, Pease, McCormick families and other related lines; the writings of C. C. Russell and Sidney Dyer McCormick; the history of Crawford County and the Forest Hill neighborhood; the Goodman Wonder Show, and travels in other states.

 

Folders 1-26 include biographical material on John Steele McCormick III and also his writings.  The section begins with a biography of McCormick, “Gentleman John: The Man from Missouri” written in 2004 by Frances E. Hanson, a former student of McCormick’s in Wyoming and the executor of his personal papers.  These folders also include items from McCormick’s schooling at Forest Hill and Grover Cleveland High School in St. Louis, his diary of a “tramp” through the southern states in 1927, and a manuscript of “History of Forest Hill and Vicinity,” in seven parts (Part 3, bor­rowed and never returned to McCormick, is missing).  There is also a printed in­dex to the Forest Hill history, compiled and issued supplementally after the history was published in 1969.

 

Folders 27-41 contain personal papers and correspondence.  Especially noteworthy are a letter from an aunt, Jean Fox, written from Paris, France in 1925; McCormick’s long-term corre­spondence with a cousin, Sarah Russell, of Fredericktown, Missouri, 1924-1954; correspondence with William Sanders including a typescript of the minutes of the Courtois Baptist Church, 1831; and letters from Rose Alexander, a local historian and columnist in the Crawford County newspa­pers, 1968-1988.

 

Folders 42-63 contain McCormick family photographs and papers.  There are portraits and snapshots of John Steele McCormick at various ages, his boyhood home and poultry farm at For­est Hill, and as a musician with the Goodman Wonder Show.  Family papers include a photograph of John Steele McCormick I by W. H. Unger of Ironton, Missouri, and items representing his grandparents, Sidney Dyer and Julia (Sullivan) McCormick, of Henderson, Kentucky.  Sidney D. McCormick was a minor literary figure and the collection includes exam­ples of his poetry and writings, as well as items about him.

 

Folders 64-98 represent the Russell side of McCormick’s ancestry.  They contain consider­able genealogical materials as well as Descendants of Theodore P. Russell and Emily Guild Rus­sell (1963), co-authored with Howard M. Johnson; copies of Theodore Pease Russell’s “Old Times” columns in the Iron County Register; items concerning Mary Oat Russell and Emily Guild Russell; early Pease/Russell correspondence, 1810-1935; and the diaries of Claud C. Russell, 1896-1926.  McCormick and his grandfather “C.C.” or “Pops” Russell, who lived near Forest Hill in the area known as Coffeyton, were especially close.  Russell would spend his final days living with his grandson in Wyoming.  Folder 72 contains a biography of “Pops” Russell written by McCormick (1986).

 

Folders 99-107 contain items concerning families allied or related to the McCormick line, including genealogical papers on the Holt, Magill, Rose, Smith, and Sullivan lines.  Noteworthy are letters (1847-1853) to James W. McCormick written by an uncle, William Walker, from Hen­derson, Tennessee.

 

Folders 108-112 contain miscellaneous historical information on Crawford and Iron coun­ties.   Most useful are clippings of Rose Alexander’s newspaper column, “Dowler Mill,” 1965-1994, and articles on the history of Crawford County published in the Bourbon Beacon, by Harry H. Missey, and James King, 1991-1996.

 

Volumes 1-15 consist of photograph albums and scrapbooks.  More than half are devoted to McCormick’s travels in the late 1930s with the “Fantazma” production of the Goodman Wonder Show.  They contain photographs of fellow performers and friends along the road, postcards from several Midwestern states, and many ephemeral items pertaining to traveling with the Goodman Show.

 

 

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