Information Sheet

 

 

R         Sainte Genevieve (Mo.).

1243                Bicentennial scrapbooks, 1933-1935.

                                    Two volumes, photocopies.

 

 

 

These are scrapbooks compiled by Francis J. Rozier, chairman of the Bicentennial Com­mittee of the Ste. Genevieve Chamber of Commerce, during the planning and observance (1935) of the bicentennial of Sainte Genevieve in Sainte Genevieve County, Missouri.  Included are clip­pings, printed material, photographs, correspondence, and miscellaneous papers.

 

Sainte Genevieve, the oldest permanent European settlement in Missouri, has traditionally accepted its founding date as 1735, so for 1935 the small community planned and observed a grand bicentennial celebration.  Included were a parade and an impressive historical pageant with over a thousand participants.  Assisted by $10,000 in state funding, the pageant was presented on four consecutive evenings, 19-22 August 1935, in chronological order, with each performance of­fering different scenes and tableaux.  Francis J. Rozier, who helped organize and produce the spectacle, kept a scrapbook of the effort, which was later re-assembled into these two volumes.

 

Neither of the volumes was assembled in strict chronological order.  Volume 1 consists mostly of newspaper clippings and other printed material, including a series of articles by Walter J. Monaghan for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat describing each day’s events.  A financial sum­mary for the celebration can be found on pages 86A, 86B, 87A, and 87B.  Volume 2 is notable for the inclusion of 40 black-and-white photographs of the pageant stage and grounds, floats entered in the parade, and the pageant itself.  These photographs have been scanned as 600-dpi .tif format digital images.  A USB flash drive containing the images has been placed in the Information Folder.  The script of a historical radio play (not the pageant) can be found on pages 69 through 82.

 

The original scrapbook volumes have been placed in the library of the Foundation for Res­toration of Ste. Genevieve.

 

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