Date: Thu, 31 Jul 1997 02:45:53 -0400
From: "Barry A. Popik" Bapopik[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM
Subject: "I'm from Missouri-Show Me"--Vandiver's role
This is included to my prior postings on this topic for the sake of
completeness.
In a 1911 "Show Me" article in the New York Herald, Missouri
Congressman William D. Vandiver got total credit for originating "I'm from
Missouri--Show Me!" at a dinner meeting of the House Naval Committee in
Philadelphia at the Five O'Clock Club in 1899.
I traced the phrase to the 1898 Transmississippi Fair in Omaha; a
copyrighted song followed in August 1898.
I told Gerald Cohen (Mo-Rolla) that I looked throught the Five O'Clock
Club records for 1898 and 1899, and I didn't find the dinner. I said that
my time in Philadelphia was limited that day and I didn't have time to check
1900 and 1901.
Gerald Cohen took a trip back east a few weeks ago and called to tell
me he thought the dinner was March 1898, the Five O'Clock Club's 15th
anniversary. I knew he was wrong, so I went back to Philadelphia to check it
out.
The dinner was January 27, 1900!
The headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer for 28 January 1900, pg. 3,
cols. 2-4, is "CONGRESSMEN WERE SHOWN PHILADELPHIA'S ENERGY/Naval
Committee
Visits Big Establishments and Dines With 5 O'Clock Club." The article
briefly mentions that "Mr. Vandiver humorously referred to the hospitality of
Philadelphia."
Thus, Vandiver neither helped coin nor popularize "Show Me."
Take a history book and cross it out.