Along Rockhouse Road near Russellville sits what looks today like an ordinary house. For historian Jeremy Amick, it holds a nearly forgotten piece of Mid-Missouri history.
A generation from now, that may have been all anybody knew about it.
The building was once Bethel Baptist Church, a congregation formed in the late 1960s after members split from Russellville Baptist Church. The congregation survived only a handful of years before dissolving, and the building eventually became a private residence. Jeremy Amick said only a few people still remembered what it had been.
That is the kind of Mid-Missouri history Amick worries can disappear if nobody asks about it while the people who remember are still alive.
“If I hadn’t interviewed them and gotten this down and documented, this is a story that would have been gone in another generation or so,” Amick told me during an interview on Wake Up Jeff City.
When I asked whether that creates a sense of urgency, Amick summed up his work in four words.
“It’s definitely, it’s chasing ghosts at times.”
Preserving Mid-Missouri history beyond Jefferson City
Amick’s newest book, Voices of the Moreau, is the third volume he has built around the Moreau River region.
At 370 pages, it is the longest of the three. Amick said there were still stories he had to leave out. He is not even certain it will be his final Moreau book.
But the larger purpose of the project may be more important than the number of pages.
Amick told me much of the historical attention in the area has traditionally centered on Jefferson City and its best-known people and places. He has deliberately pushed farther into rural Mid-Missouri, looking for people who were never celebrities, wealthy or politically powerful but still shaped the communities where they lived.
That can mean a forgotten church in Russellville.
It can mean the origin of the name Algoa.
It can mean the history of roadside attractions around Eldon that once served motorists before Highway 54 changed.
Or it can mean a family, teacher, veteran, farmer or business owner whose influence was substantial locally even if his or her name never made a history textbook.
Amick’s own website reflects that approach to Mid-Missouri history. Recent Missouri History Moments pieces have documented subjects ranging from an almost-forgotten Russellville congregation to roadside parks, military veterans and small communities whose histories remain visible only if someone knows where to look.
The stories, Amick said, often begin with something as simple as an old postcard or a place he passes that makes him wonder what used to be there.
Eventually, enough of those individual stories begin forming a larger picture.
A publishing shutdown created another opportunity
Amick is now controlling more of that process himself.
He told me his former publisher gave him roughly a week’s notice that it was shutting down.
His response came with the kind of dry humor that ran through our conversation.
After feeling that authors sometimes get taken advantage of by publishers, Amick joked that he figured he could “take advantage of myself just as well” and started Moreau Valley Press.
The move means more work. Amick now has to deal with editing, formatting, cover design and printing decisions himself.
But it also gives him something he values: control.
He said previous publishing arrangements and newspaper columns came with word-count and space limitations. Publishing independently allows him to give a story the length and photographs he believes it needs rather than cutting material simply to fit a predetermined space.
That freedom matters when the entire point is preserving Mid-Missouri history before the details disappear.
Amick already has more books coming
Retirement has not exactly slowed him down.
Beyond Voices of the Moreau, Amick is working on a history of Stark Caverns near Eldon. He described the project as essentially a “biography” of a cave hundreds of millions of years old, requiring him to work through geology, Native American history and the generations of people connected to the cavern.
Another project traces Golden Voice Recording Company, an Illinois studio that Amick encountered while researching the band Head East. His research led to connections with artists and bands including REO Speedwagon, Styx and Dan Fogelberg.
He has also released 415 Days, the biography of Wilburn Rowden, a Vienna native who later lived in Jefferson City. Rowden served in the Army Air Forces during World War II, was shot down over Germany and spent 415 days as a prisoner of war before later serving for decades in the Missouri National Guard.
Independent records confirm Rowden was held as a German POW for 415 days and later retired from the Missouri National Guard as a chief warrant officer 4.
Amick said Voices of the Moreau and his other work can be found through MissouriHistoryMoments.com.
The volume of projects might make his work look scattered from the outside: rural churches, caves, rock bands, veterans, roadside attractions.
The thread connecting them is actually pretty simple.
Somebody remembers the story today. Tomorrow, they may not be here to tell it.
And if nobody asks, what looks like an ordinary house may eventually become just an ordinary house.
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