How this kind of came into being is, as time went on, especially when I developed the Facebook pages, I would have people reach out to me and say, you know Rich, I've got these collections, I do not have a computer, nor do I want one, and I would be fun for other people to see some of these pictures.

[music playing] [engine humming] [bird chirping] [tractor clacking] [insects buzzing] [eagle screeching] [saw buzzing] [engine humming] [TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWING, ENGINE CHUGGING] [plane whirring] [music playing] With the power of the internet, the ability to share information is easier than ever before.

Just doing a quick search online gives you access to resources from thousands of libraries, archives, and museums.

Added to this are social media sites that help create smaller groups to share photos, videos, and information of all sorts.

All of this makes a new category of history.

Digital history, defined by Norwich University as "the historians' use of modern computer and communication technologies to digitize archival materials and make them available to anyone with internet access."

Today, my guest is Richard Crabtree.

His passion for history and his efforts to share archival resources online has turned him into a digital historian in the Ozarks region.

NARRATOR: Ozarks Public Television and Missouri State University are proud to present "OzarksWatch Video Magazine," a locally-produced program committed to increasing the understanding of the richness and complexity of Ozarks culture.

Visit our website for more information.

It sounds even strange to say this, but in the early days of reality television there was a program that aired called, "If Walls Could Talk."

And I love that show.

It was on for about 20 seasons, I think, from 1998 to about 2008.

And that program was just a great show, and it really took you through interesting houses and places, and who lived there and what happened there.

And fast forward to today, and you're going to love this edition of "OzarksWatch Video Magazine."

Hi, I'm Dale Moore.

Glad you're with us.

And I've got my neighbor from across the street who also happens to know a whole lot about old houses.

And he's kind of taken this idea of the next generation and what to talk about with old houses to the next level.

So, Richard Crabtree, it is great to have you on the show.

It's a pleasure to be here, Dale.

Well, let's start from the beginning here because-- you know, let's find out a little bit about you.

And I know you've got a day job, and you had another job before you got the job you've got now, which is part of the story.

So tell us about Richard Crabtree.

Well, all this kind of started in my youth.

I was blessed to have grown up in the St. Louis area, in between Alton and Edwardsville.

And that area just chucked with history.

And when I was in high school, we had two local history classes.

And my teacher, Harold Lewis, picked on me all the time, but he liked me.

And I just fell in love with history and our local area, because we had the Lincoln-Douglas debates, we had Pere Marquette had came through, Lewis and Clark left our area.

And then, of course, all of St. Louis.

Well, then I also tie in my grandfather, Alex Crabtree.

And him and I would sit at the kitchen table for hours talking about what it was like for him to grow up in St. Louis.

So of course.

I go there and explore and try and find stuff.

So it was really a lot of fun.

And we also had lots of railroads around us, and I had a great passion for railroads, as well.

So in 1997, I was offered a job to come down here as a pharmaceutical rep. And so I came to Springfield, and when they asked me do you know anything about Springfield, and I said, it's the place we stopped to get gas to go to Branson.

[laughter] And so I said, other than that, no.

And it's like, but I'll go down there.

And I thought I'd be here just a couple of years, and then go back to St. Louis, just transfer back up here.

Well, I'm still here.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

And I love my job, and I got exploring and I found University Heights one day by accident, trying to cut through going to St. John's.

And I'm like, this is a great neighborhood, this is really cool over here.

And so when my wife and I decided that we would leave our new houses, and I said, you know, I've been watching "This Old House" for years and years.

And I said, I really would love to try working on an old house.

And so, at that time, HGTV's "If Walls Could Talk" was on-- DALE MOORE: Yep.

--and we just loved that, too.

So we decided, hey why not-- that neighborhood you found, let's see if we can find the house there.

So we ended up buying a Carl Bissman house built in 1934, beautiful Tudor house.

And I thought well, you know, the show makes it look really easy.

There's got to be a depository.

We just show up, and people are going to be knocking on our doors bringing us pictures and stuff.

We got lucky.

We had two things in the house that came with it.

One was a photograph that was taken on open house day in October the 24th in 1934.

Which was really cool, had the Carl Bissman sign in the yard.

And then inside the house, the original owners had had a landscape design that was all sketched out in colored pencils and stuff that had been left with the house my previous owners.

So I decided that, wouldn't it be cool if I could find out the people that were here and find some photographs, stories and so forth.

So I set out to find out.

Well, I found out very quickly we don't have the resources that other cities have.

And if I was going to find this stuff, I was going to have to compile it myself.

So I went to the History Museum.

I went down to the library system-- the library-- I can't talk-- down on, South Campbell-- DALE MOORE: Right.

--went there.

DALE MOORE: Right.

And then I ended up over at the Archives.

Now the archives were the most useful to me because they have-- DALE MOORE: The archives-- Greene County Archives-- OK, OK. --on Boonville.

Got you.

And they have the great resource of tax records, which are factual.

You can't dispute the tax records.

So those areas I was able to kind of be taken under the wing by a few people that show me the ropes of how to do all this research.

And once I found my house, and I actually found-- and this is what really kind of set me off on doing research-- I got lucky one day.

I was down to the library center and I was going through all this microfilm.

And all of a sudden, flashing by, I stopped it real quick, and it was an open house ad for my house.

Wow.

And Carl Bissman, what I learned very quickly, he put very few actual photographs in, they were always drawings.

And so I thought, well, that's-- that's pretty cool.

And so I got a copy of it, and I started exploring those people.

And then once I found out my history, I thought, wouldn't it be cool if I could find out my neighbor's history?

So I just didn't tell them, I just went and found it out, and they thought that was really cool.

Well, I ended up doing my block-- DALE MOORE: Yeah.

--then the neighborhood-- DALE MOORE: Yeah.

--and then that kind of led to Phelps Grove.

And then, of course, that went over to Rountree.

And it's just like turning a leaf over, every time I turn something over, something was connected.

And next thing I knew, I had this massive stockpile of images and photographs and stories and stuff.

And it's like, what the heck am I going to do with all this?

And then one day in 2009, unfortunately, my company, they decided to let a few of us go.

And I'm like, what in the world am I going to do with myself?

And so I decided from a friend of mine, she said, why don't you take your love of history, and you like working on old houses, why don't you become a realtor and sell old houses in our area?

And that's what I did.

And I've been doing that now since 2009.

So you kind of specialize in midcity, midtown-- RICHARD CRABTREE: Mhm.

--is kind of the area that you focus on?

You mentioned St. Louis, and I love going to St. Louis just to drive through the old parts of town because there are just so many-- obviously-- so many old-- and boy if they could talk, I mean-- Oh, sure.

--if old walls could talk.

And you mentioned here, and Carl Bissman in particular, that I live in a Bissman house.

RICHARD CRABTREE: Mhm.

DALE MOORE: And started following your page and kind of getting interested in Bissman.

And I learned that after Bissman got out of the business, he started a furniture company.

RICHARD CRABTREE: Correct.

DALE MOORE: And he manufactured furniture.

So my current quest is to try and find a piece of Bissman furniture.

It is very difficult to find.

RICHARD CRABTREE: It's interesting, over the last ten years it's really taken off, especially his mid-century furniture.

So what happened, obviously 1942, FDR passed a decree basically that no houses could be built-- I think it was like around June, July of '42-- and plus Carl had lost his folks to the war.

So they were all fighting, materials were scarce.

For some reason the Ozarks at that time still had a plentiful supply of walnut, and so he decided to take that.

He ended up first building children's play-- play toys and children's furniture.

And then that, after the war, kind of progressed into adult furniture.

And then he did colonial, and then he did mid-century.

The mid-century stuff was on the line of like Heywood-Wakefield.

Very, very popular, especially on the coast.

It's always funny when I mention that name to somebody who's from California or that.

They know him for furniture, had no clue he ever built a house.

And because it's very, very hard to come by because people are buying it up elsewhere, because it's more affordable than the Heywood-Wakefield.

So he ended up doing that, along with still working with Dick Stahl, designing houses.

Which is very interesting, because there's a house on Delaware that is the twin of your house-- DALE MOORE: Yes, I know where it is.

RICHARD CRABTREE: --a little bit backwards.

DALE MOORE: Yes.

RICHARD CRABTREE: And that was on the request of the Squires family of Squires Lumber to-- they loved your house-- Yeah.

--so they just wanted a copy of it.

Yeah.

But that furniture is hard-- now, every now and then I'll have somebody reach out to me, saying if you know somebody who wants some, put it on your page, let them know.

But if it doesn't come cheap anymore.

Yeah, Yeah.

You know, you mentioned-- and you mentioned Dick Stahl in particular-- let's talk about some of those giants of that era.

Of course there was Mr. Hammons and the development work that he was doing.

But the '50s, '60s and '70s really were a boom in Springfield-- and I mean, we see it now, of course.

Oh, sure.

But who were some of those early names?

I mean, Dick Stahl.

Who were some of the other pioneers that were builders building homes, and doing all of that?

Well, when you go back-- you know, one guy we can never forget about, of course, is John Woodruff.

And John T. Woodruff was instrumental in getting things off the ground in our area, bringing the Frisco Railroad down here, and bringing the new shops, which brought a lot of business.

But he happened to decide that he was going to build his own subdivision, the only one he ever did.

He designed the Town of Camdenton, but the only subdivision he ever did was called Country Club District, which was north of the country club.

The person who butted up against him who really was instrumental in early Springfield developing neighborhoods and promoting them, was William Howard Johnson.

Mr. Johnson developed Meadowmere Place.

He also had built the Town of Hollister, and he was hired by Francis Xavier Herr to do Phelps Grove Park.

And at that time, it was supposed to be a subdivision.

And it was a competing subdivision with John T. Woodruff's Country Club District.

The problem was, John's subdivision would mimic the ones that were in St. Louis and Kansas City, big wide boulevards kind of sweeping around, nice.

Over at Phelps Grove, it was like being in the jungle.

It was very woodsy, and the Win-- Wasn't there a golf course there at one point?

In Phelps Grove?

Yes.

No.

That would be-- the golf course was in Meadowmere.

Oh, OK.

So basically, the Country Club set from Meadowmere down to Delaware over to Glenstone and Portland.

That was kind of that square.

So that's where the golf course was.

And it was interesting because it was designed by Spalding.

They came in, and Mr Johnson was one of the people that was on the committee, along with Woodruff was there.

He was their attorney putting all the paperwork together.

But that subdivision, that whole area, was way outside the city limits.

We forget the city limits at the time, in 1910, stopped at Grand and National.

And so a lot of people wanted to be out in those really nice areas.

At the time Phelps Grove was being put to place, I mean, this university was very small.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

And surrounded by subdivisions.

And so this whole area just really took off.

But Johnson and Woodruff were key.

As we get in the later times, University Heights would really take off with different contractors.

There's a couple of them down, there.

Mr. Batchelder came down from Kansas City.

He designed what I like to call the "storybook cottages."

There are several of them along Kimbrough on Stanford and University.

He developed his own subdivisions.

But we had several of those guys that were doing quite well.

By the time World War II was over, the areas that really exploded would be Brentwood.

Brentwood was interesting, or Brentwood Terrace.

William Wallace Smith of Smith Plain Callaway, this was a subdivision that he had acquired.

And it was actually owned by the Link Milling Company, And Ivan Link sold it to him.

And so they set it all up in 1945 to be the next great subdivision.

Ivan actually tried to make it a subdivision way back in 1926, but nobody was going to drive clear up by the National Cemetery to live.

Right.

So it kind of petered out.

But after the war, everybody wanted to live in suburbia.

And so Brentwood did exceptionally well out there.

Of course John T Woodruff-- I'm sorry-- when we get into getting out to Southern Hills-- Right.

You know, basically by that time in '55, '56, Brentwood had pretty much filled up.

So then John Q. Hammons would go out there, and -- Lee McLean.

Yeah, and Mr. McLean.

And then they would get Southern Hills up and running after they acquired the three farms.

Today we consider that middle Springfield.

But back then, it was way, way out in the country.

DALE MOORE: Right.

RICHARD CRABTREE: And John had a really unique way of getting people to come out there.

It's amazing his way he thought.

So he decided that the only way that he could get a lot of people to even visit the area, since it was so far removed, was how about if we have an Easter egg hunt out here.

The biggest Easter egg hunt Springfield's ever seen.

DALE MOORE: Always marketing.

RICHARD CRABTREE: And all these free things we're going to give away, the chocolate and the eggs and all that stuff.

Well, of course, every kid that could-- parent had a car, you're driving me out here, dad.

DALE MOORE: Right.

RICHARD CRABTREE: Well, while they were out there, why don't you take a look at the lots?

This could be a great place to live.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

RICHARD CRABTREE: And a lot of people on my Facebook page have brought that up.

They still remember going out there for that Easter egg hunt.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

RICHARD CRABTREE: And he had it for two years.

Yeah, Yeah.

You know, I teach a couple of media classes at the University, one in Media Theory and-- and we always talk about our digital footprint, and I try to impress upon them that you know, that's where we are now.

And that they're are all digital natives, and you and I are digital immigrants coming into this.

Mhm.

But the amazing thing about all of this is, I think that we're now looking at history and talking about it in terms of a digital history.

And you're really a digital historian.

Is that how you would characterize what you do?

Yeah, because how this kind of came into being is, as time went on, especially when I developed the Facebook pages, I would have people reach out to me and say, you know, Rich, I've got these collections.

I do not have a computer, nor do I want one.

And it would be fun for other people to see some of these pictures.

There's one gentleman that I deal with a lot, Bob Pilon He has a massive collection that him and his dad had put together over the years.

And Bob's been very gracious to share a lot of the stuff that he's had with me.

And he always gets a kick when I'm able to correct or find some of the things that are not quite that were written on some of the pictures.

But those collections have been just an absolute godsend for the people in Springfield.

And after other people see it, then they trust me to meet up with me and sit down-- will you scan my family collection and share what we know.

And so you know, I have come across all sorts of incredible stuff.

And of course, being a railroad nut, I love all the train stuff that I come across.

But it's amazed me the amount of collections that are out there that people have.

And my concern is-- and I express this when I do my talks-- is that if you have this stuff, please let me or somebody scan it.

Because you may appreciate it, but I can almost guarantee some of the kids and grandkids and that are not going to care, and then when you pass, this stuff is going to end up maybe like at Relics-- Right.

--with $5-- Right.

--marked on it, and no names.

And we're all staring at it like, it'd be cool to know who this was, but there's nothing attached to it.

I love all the posts that you do, but I think my favorite post that I've seen you do, and you do them quite often, is you seem to have a good relationship with the newspaper.

RICHARD CRABTREE: Mhm.

And a lot of the photos that you pull out of the newspaper-- and I'm thinking back to some of the Christmas photos-- RICHARD CRABTREE: Sure.

How did you get started thinking about using those as part of your narrative?

Sure.

Well, what's interesting is the-- just recently, the Springfield News-Leader-- whether it was the News Leader-or somebody-- had came across a vast collection of negatives.

And of course, everybody has a great affection for Betty Love.

DALE MOORE: Oh, yeah.

And so those are always fun to go through.

And now that we have newspapers.com, I can go through and take the old digital-- original pictures, whether the verbiage on it is correct or not, and at least kind of pinpoint where I can go back and find the actual newspaper article, and put all that history back together for people to relive.

And I forget-- I love stuff like, from 1950 to 1850.

And you have to remember, it's like well, if you were alive in 1950, you're 70, 80, 90-years-old now, and so trying to remember past 50 is kind of tough.

Yeah.

And there's a few folks out there that can.

So that '50s, '60s really hits home with people.

Plus, it's, Americana and everybody has a positive view of a lot of that stuff.

The thing that I've always been amazed, if you want to really set people off and really get their juices flowing, you talk about food and shopping.

Mhm.

Because everybody seems to relate to it, especially food.

And it just-- they just go on and on and on.

And they can remember walking the Herr's and smelling the big cheese block-- DALE MOORE: Yeah.

--when you walked in there.

Or the fresh donuts being made at Kresge's.

When you walked in there, there's a little doughnut machine going on.

So it's always interesting how smells and food and different things go like-- Christmas downtown was always a big-- it was for me in St. Louis, so I knew it was a big deal down here.

So it's always fun to share those.

Let's talk about the Facebook pages, before the time gets away from us.

"Springfield, Missouri History, Landmarks & Vintage photography," that's-- that's your flagship, that's the one that started-- RICHARD CRABTREE: Right, ah-huh.

DALE MOORE: How many followers do you have on that page?

RICHARD CRABTREE: Right now, we're around 24,000, which always amazes me.

And the whole reason that got started, there's another-- "You Know If You're From Springfield."

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

RICHARD CRABTREE: And there's a myriad of different topics that pop up on there.

But every time I do something with history, it would seem to take off.

But you know, there wasn't as much history being-- DALE MOORE: And when did that page start?

RICHARD CRABTREE: Oh gosh, that started probably five or six years-- DALE MOORE: So 24,000-- north of 24,000 in-- RICHARD CRABTREE: Five years.

DALE MOORE: That's pretty stunning.

RICHARD CRABTREE: Yeah.

DALE MOORE: You've got to figure out how to monetize that.

[laughter] RICHARD CRABTREE: Unfortunately, it's not like "YouTube."

I wish it was like "YouTube," I wouldn't have to do real estate as much.

But the-- yeah, with Facebook it just amazes me.

Now, what's cool about it is, we've all seen this on Facebook where we've been able to connect to people we haven't seen in years.

DALE MOORE: Right.

RICHARD CRABTREE: I've been able to connect with families that haven't seen photographs or heard stories or images.

And I've even had people reach out to me, they're just like, oh we're so happy you brought this up.

No one's talked nice about our family like this in years.

DALE MOORE: (LAUGHING) RICHARD CRABTREE: From a guy who's only been here since '97, I'm amazed at what all I've crammed up in my head.

Yeah.

So when I do my lectures and talks people just like, you talk like you've been here your entire life.

And I'm like-- and I haven't even really started researching until 2007 Yeah.

How hard is it to curate that site.

I mean, that's a lot of-- that's a lot of moving parts.

Yeah, I've got so many hard drives filled with stuff, and then I've got them all sectioned out, and so forth.

And I work a lot with Tom Peters, here, and get him stuff.

Like, one thing-- and this, again, because somebody knew I was-- liked history-- when John King passed away, they were going to get rid of all his stuff, and of course his house.

And there was really nobody around to take possession of his personal history, his photographs.

And there were just boxes filled-- John threw nothing away.

And he had scrapbooks when he was in Alaska and he worked on the Alaskan Highway.

And he shot Kodachrome slides in the '30s.

And these are just fascinating stuff.

And so they're like, would you like this?

And I'm like, yeah, of course I would.

So once I got it all scanned, then I brought it here.

So that now the university has it, so they can scan and have it perpetual for their museum.

But stuff like that is just invaluable, because so often this stuff just gets thrown away.

What's the most interesting story, or house, or favorite story that you've discovered?

You know, I have a great passion for Phelps Grove Park.

And it's-- because it touches so many people.

It touches to Herr family, It touches the Johnson family.

So many people went there, it was our first zoo.

We had a massive lake there where the art museum is.

But you know, it's the one thing I have the fewest photographs of, and it just drives me nuts.

So any time I come across a picture no one's seen of Phelps Grove Park, I just can't wait to share it.

Because they're-- for whatever reason, everybody went there, but nobody seemed to take a lot of pictures.

I lived at Kings in Brookside for about six years in a house just off of-- on Kings off of Brookside, and love that neighborhood.

House I lived in-- in fact, Carl Fox had lived in this house.

Oh, sure.

So it was-- you know, that's it, you start hearing stories and collecting stories.

So I just-- that's why I was curious what-- what might have been your greatest memory, or your-- So what have you not found out that you want to find out in this whole history, digital history?

RICHARD CRABTREE: Wow.

DALE MOORE: What rabbit are you chasing?

RICHARD CRABTREE: You know, I'm chasing multiple rabbits all the time.

I tell you, there's one thing that I get asked about all the time, and I've yet to come across a picture of it.

And that was the DO Hospital that was at Sunshine and Holland.

A lot of people were born there, they started there in the '30s And it was torn down like, overnight, and those apartments went up in its place.

DALE MOORE: Wow.

And I've got a Sanborn map showing the outline, I've got some advertisements that I've come across.

But I-- forever, every now and then, somebody reaches out.

It's like, can you find me a picture of that?

And I'm like, I've been looking.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

It just doesn't seem to exist.

One day I'll find it.

Yeah, yeah, you will.

So we just got a couple of minutes left.

I knew this was going to go like that.

So you're doing presentations.

So what are the topics?

I mean, I can guess, but what-- Oh well, I've done Frisco Railroad, how it built the town of Springfield, of course Phelps Grove.

I've done stuff on the Johnson family, Hollister, I've done downtown.

I've done our neighborhood, the Rountree, Delaware neighborhoods.

And they're always fascinating.

I wish we could get more younger people to come.

You know, it's always great to get people that know it, but I'd love to educate the people that aren't that aware that live in the area.

I was blessed last year, I got a chance to go in front of the kids over here at Phelps School for the Gifted.

And what a great group of kids.

Like sponges and wonderful questions.

That's very exciting.

So I get-- so what I ended up doing now, especially with COVID and so forth, is I started basically putting them on YouTube.

So I would do voice overs and put them up on "YouTube."

So most all those are on "YouTube."

DALE MOORE: So you've got a "YouTube" channel.

RICHARD CRABTREE: Yeah.

DALE MOORE: How do you have time to be a real estate agent?

RICHARD CRABTREE: Oh, well I get up every morning sometime between 3:30 and 4:30.

And I just start into it.

And so by the time I go to do my walk and that, and get ready to take a shower, and I'm out the door.

And then I'll probably sit down for another hour or two before we watch TV for the evening.

Unless, of course, I've got clients, and it's, you know, going just have to punt it to the next day.

Sure.

Yeah, yeah.

But when I've got six, almost seven pages, it's a challenge.

But like I tell everybody, I said once that turns into work, I'll quit it.

But so far, it's been a fun hobby and I've really enjoyed it.

Well, Richard, thank you you're doing important work, you're doing great work, and we all-- I know everybody appreciates it that lives in the area here.

So keep up the good work, and thanks for being with us on the program today.

I appreciate it.

Oh, pleasure being here.

Thank you.

My guest has been Richard Crabtree.

He's my neighbor, he's a pretty good guy, he knows a lot about this place.

I told you, you were going to like this program today.

You stay tuned.

I'll be right back.

[music playing] NARRATOR: Ozarks Public Television and Missouri State University are proud to present "OzarksWatch Video Magazine," a locally-produced program committed to increasing the understanding of the richness and complexity of Ozarks culture.

Visit our website for more information.

I'd like to thank my guest Richard Crabtree for sharing what he does to promote local history in this new digital-history era.

And I hope you enjoyed our program today, and that you'll join us again real soon for another edition of "OzarksWatch Video Magazine."

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