Information Sheet

 

 

R         Miami Club (West Plains, Mo.).

209                  Record book, 1901-1913.

                                    One volume.

 

MICROFILM

 

 

 

This collection consists of a record book and miscellaneous papers of a men’s club in West Plains, Howell County, Missouri, 1901-1909.  The volume also includes records of expenses for dances held by the Pickwick Club and the Marquis Orchestra, 1911-1913, and the minutes of meetings of the “Republicans of West Plains,” 1912.

 

The record book includes minutes of meetings of the Miami Club from 6 October 1901, the organizational meeting, through 4 January 1909, at which time the treasury was dis­bursed.  The volume contains numerous enclosures, primarily bills and receipts for various services provided to the club.  Minutes of meetings are in chronological order following the ir­regular schedule of the club.

 

The Miami Club was formed at West Plains, Missouri, by a group which included most of the town’s young businessmen.  Their first meeting on 6 October 1901 resulted in the lease of the second floor of the Galloway Building on Washington Avenue.  The lease, reported to members on 11 October, came two days before the name “Miami Club” had been formally adopted.  Though styled as a scientific or literary association, the organization seems to have hosted more social events, particularly dances, than lectures in its club rooms.  Its first major financial com­mitments included the acquisition of a piano and billiards tables.

 

Active membership in the club at any one time is difficult to estimate.  Two dozen new mem­bers were accepted into the club in 1904, but the increase was more than offset by the in­creasing number of members who were inactive or in arrears to the treasury.  Perhaps due to flagging in­ter­est, dissolution of the club was first discussed in December 1906.  How­ever, the club continued until 23 November 1908, when the membership voted to disband.  Fourteen mem­bers in good standing received dividend checks for twenty-two dollars each when the club’s prop­erty was liq­ui­dated.

 

Following the demise of the Miami Club, its record book remained with Charles G. Brown, a charter member and officer of the club, who was a businessman and musician.  In the following years Brown used the record book for memoranda of expenses for dances held at West Plains, and for minutes of a Republican Club, which was formed in 1911 to organize a Republican ticket for municipal elections in 1912.  The minute book was then forgotten in the years following Brown’s death.  Its recovery from a West Plains residence once owned by Brown is recounted in the West Plains Gazette (No. 26, Fall-Winter 1984).  This article in­cludes a number of excerpts from club minutes, and is illustrated with views of the club rooms in the Galloway Building, and of a baseball team sponsored by the Miami Club.

 

 

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