A Youth Program Sponsored by the Jackson County Historical Society in Missouri

In 2022, my son and I jumped onto the opportunity of being in the first handful of participants of the Jackson County Historical Society Young Historians program. As an educational program, it’s a cool idea. With museums always wanting more participation, and most children’s tendency to love “gamifying” things and building towards tangible achievements, something like this is a genius idea. When we finished up, supposedly the first in 2022, we were awarded with some prizes including a generous free meal at a local restaurant and some sticker packs. Overall it was a great experience with a few hitches, but I would love to do more things like it. We also did a similar thing in Topeka, Kansas for Topeka Dino Days, with the same sort of results – he had a blast!

The program appears to have changed a tad since we did it, as not every museum was offering free child’s admission in 2022, and there was a free T-shirt as well (which is still on the order page, but I cannot confirm). It looks like the participating museums are the same, and the general idea has continued. Since doing our History Boy Summer and History Tour stuff, we had already attended a few of the sites, but getting out of the house is good for everyone, and re-visiting some museums was cool because no two trips are entirely the same.

I mentioned there were a few hiccups, and those were honestly to no fault of the program, but they were annoying. One museum greeted us with a somewhat belligerent ticketing agent that insisted they were not part of the program, almost refusing to give us a stamp. Considering this was blatantly false and the price of an ink stamp is literally free, the person in question was insanely over the top with his bad attitude. We got it all sorted out after I had him read the passport, but it seemed like not all of the sites gave their staff adequate training on how to handle everything. This also resulted in what I assume was us paying more than we should have for tickets, as I was pretty we were supposed to get free kids’ admission to almost every site. Since these sites are cheap anyways, I was not too worried, but not everyone was on the same page.

With the 2023 season over, and 2024 looming on the horizon, I’m hoping it’s all better now, and maybe in a few years we’ll consider doing it again, especially if the sites rotate out to different participants at some point.

From their website:

Calling all Young Historians!
The Jackson County Historical Society is excited to offer a new educational program designed for children. If you have a child from the ages of 5 to 15 years old interested in visiting local historic sites and museums, we have a fun program for them! Create memories and learn about the county you live in. This is a perfect gift for any child in your life too and not limited to just your child. Perfect for grandchildren, nieces, nephews, or your friend’s children too!

All Young Historian members will receive

• An annual membership in their name.
• 1 copy of the Historic Illustrated Atlas of Jackson County
• 1 Jackson County Historical Society Passport

Each passport is good for FREE museum admission to participating historic sites and museums in Jackson County throughout the year starting on the purchase date of the passport. The exception is at the WWI Museum, the admission is buy 1 get 1 free. Visit each site and receive a stamp. The child must be accompanied by a parent/ guardian/ adult. Redeem the passport at the end of the year for various prizes.

So where did we go?

1859 Jail Museum

This was a museum I have attended a few times now, with write-ups HERE and HERE. On our second trip we got to see a section of the museum that was unavailable before (the second floor cell-block) and a one-room schoolhouse we had missed before. It’s a site packed with all sorts of cool history, and a must see for those in the area. If you couple it with the Pioneer Trails Adventures Mule Tour, usually parked right outside the museum, it makes for a perfect day for anyone wanting to learn something about Independence, MO.

Fort Osage

This is another site we’ve frequented quite a bit, and was the actual very first entry into my History Boy Summer series way back during the Covid-19 Pandemic. This particular visit was coincidentally when we attended during the Fourth of July weekend, which is definitely a great time to visit some historic sites due to having living history reenactors on hand. Fort Osage is one of the few things in Missouri from around the time of The War of 1812, and once served as the literal edge of America before westward expansion really took off. It’s a unique bit of American history with no long trip to one of the former colonial settlements on the East Coast tacked on.

Negro Leagues Baseball Museum

Perhaps one of the best kept secrets in Kansas City is The Negro leagues Baseball Museum on 18th and Vine. Kansas City was perhaps one of the hottest parts of the country for baseball at the time, and it rested almost entirely on Negro League teams like The Kansas City Monarchs. This trip was the first time taking my son, who at the time was six years old. Truthfully, and thankfully I suppose, he’s not really to clued in on what racism is as of yet, but the concepts of people people treated differently because of how they look upset him. Amid the stories of racial injustice are also stories of the triumph and ingenuity of everyone involved in the Negro Leagues, as many of their players, game rules, and even scheduling ideas eventually folded directly into a non-segregated Major League Baseball. There is also The American Jazz Museum located in the same building that I have never visited, so one of these days I need to try that out as well.

Kansas City Museum

Once more of a Natural History Museum, which Kansas City really needs to step up on, The Kansas City Museum at Corinthian Hall is an interesting hybrid of a museum telling the story of how some of the city’s leaders lived during the early 20th Century, an overall history of Kansas City, and a modern art museum rolled into one, all depending on what floor you are on. When most historic houses in the area are either plantation houses or small mansions decorated with nineteenth century artifacts, this is one of the few things in the area one could compare to “a palace” with the sort of crazy items from the wealthiest Americans on display. I’m not sure stuff like this is something we should aspire to, and I have my opinions on the ultra-wealthy, but it’s a side of the city you don’t see much anymore, and an important part of what makes it what it is.

Alexander Majors House

The Alexander majors House and the John Wornall House are both allocated the same spot on the Passport, so getting a stamp at one of the two locations is all you need. We chose, however, to visit both houses because they were not very far apart, and the admission had a deal if you tried to do both in one day. The Alexander majors House, in particular, was the home of a man that, along with notable business partners William Russell and William waddell, controlled the freight transport industry west of the Missouri River. Majors owned and operated a number of side ventures and, along with his business partners, helping create such notable businesses as The Pony Express and The Pike’s Peak Express, neither of which had lasting power, but have imbued themselves onto the collective mythos for The Frontier times that one would assume they were more prevalent. The actual tour is not atypical of most mansions turned museums in the area, but there is a character to the house and the artifacts inside that you won’t see anywhere else.

John Wornall House

The John Wornall House, in comparison to the Alexander majors House is a slight bit more “cozy” and feels like something that could have been lived in more. The house is most notable for being situated right in the middle of the site of The Battle of Westport, a definitive American Civil War battle that solidified the Union’s win in Missouri, pushing CSA General Sterling Price off into Kansas towards the total defeat of his army at The Battle of Mine Creek. The house itself was used as a field hospital during the engagement. The tour here is self-guided and fairly standard for historic houses in the area.

Harry S. Truman Library

There are currently only fifteen presidential libraries in the whole United States, and thankfully one of those sits firmly in the middle of the very town that I call home. While the Harry S Truman Presidential Library is not new, it was shut down for an extended period of time and re-opened in 2022 after a huge upgrade. Aside from holding records and other items from one of history’s most important wartime presidents, the building houses a state of the art museum detailing the life of Truman, World War I and II, The Cold War, and McCarthyism. It’s a wide swath of time to cover, but the museum does it very well. In my opinion, a stop in Independence, Missouri is incomplete without at least one Truman-related museum, and you can’t get much better than this. I will say, it may be a bit dry for younger children, but my son injured all of the interactive exhibits – especially one that was basically a WWI artillery videogame.

National World War I Museum

if anyone has read my blog in any capacity, they will know that I go to this museum a LOT. I’ve been on a somewhat large WWI kick for the past few years, and love going here. The following are some examples of a few trips I have made in the past.

• National WWI Museum
• War remains
• Snapshots
• Black Citizenship
• Empires at war
• Captured
• Entertaining the Troops
• Living The Great War Weekend

My son always loves seeing things like tanks, planes, and weapons – something that this museum has a LOT of. While some of the information about this war can be very bleak, there are plenty of interactive exhibits and a well-stocked gift shop with a number of historical toys for the kiddos.

Vaile Mansion

Built by Colonel and Mrs. Harvey Vaile in 1881, this picturesque mansion is a delight to visit, and I assume would be absolutely astounding if visiting around Christmas-time since they do all sorts of crazy decorating. While not as “In your face” and over-the-top as Corinthian Hall, The Vaile Mansion is obviously a huge show of wealth in the area. My son is honestly not as enamored with seeing old houses, as one can imagine, but weird little tidbits like a wooden indoor toilet caught his attention for some reason. Still a gorgeous place to visit, and well worth the the trip.

Toy and Miniatures Museum

I went to this museum a LONG time ago and remember it being cool, but somewhat cluttered and not organized. Apparently somebody could read my mind, because the whole building was entirely re-done and modernized at some point and it is basically a whole new place now. The museum collects toys and miniatures from as far back as hundreds of years ago on up to our modern era and stands out as a wholly unique little bit of history tucked away into the middle of Kansas City. When we went, there was a special superhero toy exhibit that my son loved, so be sure to see if they have anything like that when you go!

Missouri Town 1855

We have visited Missouri Town 1855 a few times, and I would especially recommend going during the Fourth of July Weekend unless it is splintering hot outside. As I mentioned with Fort Osage, they have living history reenactors there and just that little glimpse of what it could be like with people doing their day-to-day tasks way back then is really cool. There was also a number of games available, including a children’s area with toys from 150+ years ago, and demonstrations on how children lived long ago. It’s the perfect time to take kids out to the museum, and they will absolutely have a blast!

Conclusion:

Instead of writing eleven separate blog posts, I figured this was a good way to look at this program as a whole, and perhaps help you get an idea of what to expect in 2024 if you should like to participate. We managed to get all of these done within about two months, but had the ability to go to a museum or two every weekend during that summer. I know not everyone will have an open schedule like that, but we made it somewhat like a quest, and my son was excited to keep gathering stamps as we went. Overall, this was a great experience, and I hope I can find something else like this around here!