LESLIE WYMAN: Here in Forsyth, at our main location, we do still have our beautiful exhibits provided by grants from the Slusher Foundation and local artifacts and paintings.

But we, being at the county seat, most of our visitors are researchers.

They deal with genealogy or historical research, both.

And so we've had to grow and expand and change.

[music playing] Local history museums and historical societies are a vital part of preserving our past.

These organizations work tirelessly to make sure that our history is protected and preserved for future generations.

In Taney County, the White River Valley Historical Society slogan is "Keeping Ozarks History Alive Since 1961."

Today my guest is Leslie Wyman.

She's the Managing Director of the White River Valley Historical Society.

We'll talk about all they do to preserve, protect, and promote history in the upper White River Valley.

ANNOUNCER: 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.

Hi, I'm Dale Moore.

Welcome to "OzarksWatch Video Magazine."

And we are on the road in Taney County.

And we're excited to be down here today.

You know, everywhere I go, I bump into somebody.

And they'll say, you know my favorite "OzarksWatch Video Magazine program" you've ever done is, well, it's either the fish gigging show-- no, wait a minute.

It's the time that you talk to that really nice lady in that cemetery and she taught you how to dowse graves.

Well, that was Leslie Wyman.

And we're back at Leslie Wyman's for another visit today.

And Leslie, I'm so happy to be here seeing you.

Well, I'm glad to see you again, Dale.

It's been a long been.

DALE MOORE: It's been a long time.

But boy, the time flies and here we are.

Here we are.

Well, we're going to talk all things historical with you today.

Boy, folks, we've got-- I mean, this is a jam-packed program today.

We've got a museum here that we are in that it's a museum, it's an education center, it's a research center, it's everything rolled up into one.

And we get pretty excited about these kinds of things.

So the White River Historical Society is a thing.

White River Valley Historical Society.

DALE MOORE: White River Valley is a thing.

Yes.

That's the thing we do here in the Ozarks.

We have to make sure that everything gets precisely-- who owns what and how we say is a big deal.

You bet.

Let's talk a little bit first of all about you and how you've been involved over the years in this society and the history of Taney County.

OK, well, for myself, I have always loved history, even in school.

But I actually became involved with the Historical Society as just a member in the mid 2000s and promptly became involved, of course, in cemeteries, became a cemetery hopper.

And then later in 2009, I ended up being hired as Managing Director of the Society.

And here I am.

Was the cemetery hopping-- I meant to ask you this at the original program-- did you get involved in that because you were trying to find out your own relatives and where they were?

Or-- I got involved because I am an avid genealogist.

OK. And at that time, there were not really any consistent sites online.

And we were trying-- I had noticed that the White River Valley Historical Society had a little database online.

And so I became involved with it for that.

My husband is a native of Taney County.

I am not, but he is.

And so yes, I did want to know more about our family.

But I also felt all the graves should be online.

Yeah.

How long has the society been around?

When did it start?

We started in 1961.

That's a long time ago.

So this is our 60th year.

Wow.

Yes.

That is a long time ago.

It is.

And what do the early days of the society looked like?

When it started in 1961, the president was the superintendent of schools, Elmo Ingenthron.

Many people know him because he wrote "Land of Taney," "Borderland Rebellion" and "Indians of the Ozarks Plateau."

And the society's goals at that time was to more or less cover the region.

That's why the name White River Valley.

Mm-hmm.

It was not to be centered on any one county, but instead was to become a parent organization for all the surrounding counties.

At that time, Carroll County, Arkansas and Greene County, Missouri had historical societies.

But the other counties did not.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

LESLIE WYMAN: And instead, representatives from all of those counties served on the board.

And the goals were to publish the magazine, start collecting, basically, follow our mission statement, which is "Preserve, protect, and promote the cultural history."

DALE MOORE: Yeah, I was going to ask about that next.

You know, I remember when Table Rock Dam was being built.

My dad worked on that project.

And so every Sunday our outing for the family was to drive down from Lawrence County and to see what had happened on the dam that week, what kind of work had taken place there.

And I remember, specifically, that my dad made reference to the White River Valley, because you're right.

I mean, there was this sense of where everything was.

And if you think about it in the context of the Valley, that's just a little bit bigger or you know, in your mind's eye, anyway.

It's more of a place.

And the White River itself is so long.

I mean, it's all lakes, now.

But the center of it is still the White River.

It's funny to talk to younger people today and be able to tell them, you know, I remember when there wasn't a lake there.

There was nothing there.

Yeah.

They look at you like you're crazy, right?

There's always been a lake there, right?

Right.

Well, you did mention this.

And you know, I've been struck by the fact that your mission statement and really the mission statement of what we do on "OzarksWatch Video Magazine" are really very, very close.

Your says, "The White River Valley Historical Society preserves, protects, and promotes the history of the Upper White River Valley focusing on Taney County, Missouri."

And we talk about protecting the culture in a broader sense, obviously.

But it's all part of the same mission really.

It is.

It is.

You ever feel like we're all kind of pulling in a boat together on these things?

I do.

There's such a sense of collaboration among all the historical societies and different entities that are interested in history.

You know, I think that when you think about the success of an organization, you certainly think about-- you look around here in this beautiful museum that we're in.

I can't help but call it a museum, because-- I know you think of it-- and we'll talk about that.

But when I look around this, you know, my first thought is, boy, you know, what a great-- but it's the people that made this happen that really are what makes it happen.

And my sense is that the Historical Society has one heck of a board.

And talk to me about the importance of the board and how the board helps and what the board does.

Well, the board, of course, just as any board, oversees the entire organization.

But our board, from the very beginning, all board members have always been dedicated to doing whatever it takes to involve the public and understanding the importance of preserving the history of the region.

And we have a wonderful board right now.

We have tried to-- How large is your board?

Right now, we're a little bit short.

We only have, I believe, 11 members.

DALE MOORE: OK. We are planning to expand our board and have tried to have one board member from every town in Taney County.

DALE MOORE: Wow.

So we want to be sure we represent the entire county.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

And right we have quite some for Branson, Forsyth, Bradleyville, Cedar Creek.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

But we have some other areas we still need to cover.

Yeah, well, I mean, you're right.

You're only as good as your board.

And obviously, there's a lot going on here that that's pretty indicative of a powerful one, a very active board.

So what are some of the things that you as a Society do?

And we know you do the the cemetery work.

And we've talked about that?

What other the kinds of things does the Society try to do?

Well, we've evolved over the years.

When we first started, we tended to focus-- we've always, first of all, published our magazine continuously, since 1961.

And that's the best tool.

DALE MOORE: Uninterrupted?

LESLIE WYMAN: Uninterrupted.

DALE MOORE: Wow.

LESLIE WYMAN: We did, for a short time in the '70s, go to two a year instead of four.

But otherwise, it has continued uninterrupted.

In the early years, much of the focus was on quarterly meetings.

We had a large attendance at those.

Of course, there was no computer, no online offerings, nothing like that.

We did quite a few dedication markers.

The first was at Rock Bridge over in Ozark County.

And then, as I have gone through our different minutes, we start evolving and including things like creating a time capsule.

And we formed the History Commission that actually found and marked the old steamboat landing here in Forsyth from the 1850s.

DALE MOORE: Right.

And then, we started having more productions.

We did Law Day, which featured a re-enactment of the Law and Order League, which most people know of as the Bald Knobber vigilante group.

And that continued on for several years.

And we hosted a Cherokee Powwow for several years.

Then in later years, once we started having this location, and then in 2012, we along with the city of Branson, Branson Chamber, and the Downtown Branson Betterment Association partnered for a year and opened the Branson Centennial Museum to celebrate the centennial of Branson's incorporation.

That was in 2012.

And then from there, we have just maintained that museum as well.

And that's really been something different.

That's kind of been a challenge, because we have two very distinct audiences now to appeal to.

DALE MOORE: Interesting.

LESLIE WYMAN: Yes.

Branson is where are rotating exhibits are and it's where the bulk of our visitors come from.

Of course, the Branson visitors come to our museum.

DALE MOORE: Proximity.

LESLIE WYMAN: Proximity, and so it covers a broader base.

Here in Forsyth, at our main location, we do still have our beautiful exhibits provided by grants from the Slusher Foundation and local artifacts and paintings.

But we, being at the county seat, most of our visitors are researchers.

They deal with genealogy or historical research, both.

And so we've had to grow and expand and change.

We don't have good attendance anymore at meetings.

So we gradually are moving away from those here.

But at Branson, once a month, we have our Tuesday talks.

And those are standing room only, dealing with Branson history or history from the region.

You mentioned the White River Valley Historical Quarterly.

What's the readership on that now?

Don't know on the readership.

Our membership-- all members receive it for free.

But our membership is around 350 to 400 people throughout the country, primarily in Missouri.

But we sell it-- in addition, we sell them just to the public at both locations.

And we sell a lot of them.

So I really don't know what our readership would be.

So since '61, so that's a lot of issues.

LESLIE WYMAN: It is.

Are they in the library as well?

Or are they just through the Society.

They are in various libraries throughout the state.

DALE MOORE: Ah, good.

And we have them, of course, here.

DALE MOORE: Right.

And the Springfield Greene County Library was able to put some transcriptions from 1961 to 1998 online.

And there's a link to those on our site.

We are getting ready to start imaging, digitizing all of ours.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

We're hoping that we can eventually put them online.

It won't be anytime soon.

But you asked earlier where we're at now.

And frankly, with the pandemic situation we went through in 2020, we have started thinking more of how to reach more people , digitally.

online, making more of our research materials available online, putting our exhibits online, our collections are gradually-- a small portion will be available online.

Because so many people can't travel these days.

But let's turn our attention to where we're sitting right now, because I walked in the front door here.

And boy, from the street, I mean, it obviously was an old church.

You can tell that at one point it was a church.

And you walk in.

And my first reaction was, wow .

When did you land here?

And let's start talking about where we are now.

LESLIE WYMAN: OK, well, for the first 40 years of our existence we didn't have a home.

And then for about 10 years, we were housed in the old Taney County jail, which was nice and had to be refurbished, but it was nice to have a home.

But we quickly outgrew it.

So in 2009, we were able to purchase this building-- entirely purchase it, all with donations from our members.

And we love it.

It gives us the space for everything we need.

Well, yeah, I mean, your description when you were walking me through before we went on air, you know.

It's a museum, but it's much more than that.

I mean, it's-- LESLIE WYMAN: Yes.

Do you have researchers come in quite a bit?

We do.

We have a lot of researchers come in.

What are they looking for?

Most are doing genealogy.

DALE MOORE: OK. Quite a few have purchased land in the area.

And they want to know the history of the land.

And we do have access to the Taney County court records, including deeds and things like that, so we're able to assist them with that information.

Some have family lore that they've heard of, of a old building or an event that took place in the area that they want to know if that's true or not.

So we're able to help.

DALE MOORE: So as I look around, I mean, there's artifacts all over the place.

Let's just kind of-- we've got to start with Charlie Campbell.

I mean, what an icon.

LESLIE WYMAN: Yes, totally.

DALE MOORE: The region and what a guy and what an exhibit.

LESLIE WYMAN: We actually have two exhibits on Charlie.

The Slusher Foundation did the Fishing with Charlie exhibit.

And it includes a 20-minute video of everything with his life, which is fascinating.

It's hilarious.

DALE MOORE: Oh, yeah.

LESLIE WYMAN: We love it.

But then we have a smaller exhibit which deals with when he was coach at Forsyth School, because we won the state championship with basketball in 1972, '73.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

That's what I have always thought up with Charlie.

I knew him personally of course.

But I thought of him more as Coach Campbell.

DALE MOORE: Right, yeah.

Not fishing Charlie Campbell.

He really had a couple of careers.

LESLIE WYMAN: He did.

I mean, if you thing about it, which is pretty exciting.

LESLIE WYMAN: He did.

He also raced stock cars for a time.

Now, I did know that.

Yeah, that's one of those, oh, yeah, I remember that now that you mentioned it.

LESLIE WYMAN: Yeah.

Well, it's a gorgeous exhibit.

LESLIE WYMAN: It is.

What other exhibits-- and these are very interactive exhibits.

And I love that.

They are.

They are.

And as the Slusher Foundation has given us grants to put the interactive exhibits up, we're trying with our internal exhibits to do the same thing.

So we have an exhibit on Taney County people and places that features little videos on Dr. Mary-- Dr. Mary King Long.

We all call her Dr. Mary.

DALE MOORE: Sure, sure.

And she started the first nursing home in the Tri-County area.

And she was also instrumental in starting the health department for Taney County.

It includes the Roy and Nora Slusher Foundation people.

And it includes David Lewis.

And behind us is a replica of David Lewis's cabin, which still stands and is home to black vultures, which are a protected species.

DALE MOORE: Protected.

LESLIE WYMAN: But for the hands-on, we also have old furs and hides for people to touch.

We've tried to make everything in the museum as touchable as possible or have a few quizzes that they can try to answer and hopefully enlarge their knowledge.

DALE MOORE: Yeah, yeah.

How does somebody become a member of this Society?

LESLIE WYMAN: Well, they just fill out a membership form.

They can go on our website and fill it out there.

Or they can come in.

And our basic membership dues or $25 a year.

And that does include all four quarterly magazines.

So are you the editor of the-- No, our editor is Dustin Ingenthron, who is a great or great, great nephew of Elmo Ingenthron, our original president.

Yeah, what kind of articles appear in the magazine?

Anything of historical interest.

We have genealogical records of families.

We also try to put lists.

As we work on more county records, perhaps we'll add a year of divorce records in there.

We've got the history of towns, the history of buildings, areas, anything and everything.

Yeah, please tell me that someone has collected recipes from the women of Taney County.

Well, we've got some cookbooks.

A lot of the churches have collected recipes.

And if you look back in the old "Ozark Mountaineers," they have old recipes.

We do not do a lot of recipes in our magazine.

Yeah, yeah, I love recipes.

I'm just an old recipe collector.

My grandmother passed down to me several of her old cookbooks.

And of course, they were from, you know, the churches and-- Exactly.

The Christian church got with the Methodist church.

That's the best recipes that there are.

I see a lot of volunteers working around here today.

Yes.

What are they doing?

Well, they're transcribing old records, they're indexing, they're scanning, they are uploading photos to our cataloging program, processing collections.

There's always something for a volunteer to do here.

And at our Branson location, our volunteers tend to help set up the exhibits.

That's an interesting question, because when you think of a museum, you think of "a museum."

But you're really dealing with two.

LESLIE WYMAN: We are.

We have two areas.

So what are challenges there.

And then, how do you reach those challenges?

Well, the challenges with our Branson location are just making sure we have continuing exhibits.

That's a lot of it.

And there's not as much space for volunteers to work.

So a lot of times things will start here.

Or people donate items there, which we then have to make sure are also available here.

So that's a lot of the challenges.

And realizing we have two different audiences, as I mentioned earlier.

Yeah, yeah, what does the future look like?

I mean, you've mentioned the effect that the pandemic has had and is having on our culture.

And people are learning-- I mean, the term now is, we pivoted.

We've pivoted.

And that's kind of, you know-- for you and your business and what you do, what do you think the future looks like going forward?

I think the future-- and this is one of the challenges we're dealing with-- not everyone is on a computer.

And not everyone can travel to Taney County.

So our future in challenge is to try to make items available to as many people as possible, whether they're on the computer or not.

And for example, taking our quarterlies, in addition to those being placed in libraries-- we have affiliate memberships with different libraries-- we are getting ready for Taney County to start taking some of our back issues to all the waiting rooms in the area and donate them so that the magazines can be out to people who are waiting for car repair, doctor, whatever.

And that is a challenge.

How do you reach people.

We don't have a local newspaper in Forsyth anymore.

But we do have a local newspaper in Branson, which is wonderful, to run our articles.

So we do still have a paper press presence.

And and also surrounding counties run a lot of our press releases.

But I think that's the challenge we all have to look at is how do we deal with less physical visitors and yet still provide information to people, whether they are computer people or not.

You know, I think the challenges are exciting really.

I do too.

For those of us that are in this kind of business, you know, it's like, well, so how do we stay relevant?

I think it's pretty simple how we stay relevant.

One of the issues we face is I think this has caused more people to realize that if they're going to have their stories recorded or their items protected, they need to do it now.

And we are receiving so many photos and so many donations of items that we're running out of room.

That's a lot of our challenge too, as people realize now is the time to go ahead and get those taken care of for perpetuity.

Nice problem to have.

LESLIE WYMAN: It is a good problem.

It's a good problem to have, because we can find storage.

So how do people find out about the White River Valley Historical Society?

Website, social media?

Well, we have a website and social media both.

Our website is www.wrvhs-- that's our initials-- .org.

And we have a Facebook page, which is also WRVHS.

And actually, our Facebook page is where the majority of our visitors digitally come to us.

We have an info email.

But we also have a special research email.

We are helping quite a few researchers online right now with their email requests.

They also mail us letters.

And Branson is still up and running.

And our visitors-- we have a large amount of visitors most days.

This is the off-season at the time of this filming of course.

DALE MOORE: Sure, sure, yeah.

Well, Leslie Wyman, thank you for letting us invade.

Good to see you again.

Great seeing you again.

And we really appreciate it.

I've enjoyed it.

DALE MOORE: Thank you.

Now aren't you glad you jumped in the car and rode with me today?

You stay tuned.

I'll be right back.

ANNOUNCER: 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 want to thank my guest, Leslie Wyman, for sharing what the White River Valley Historical Society does to ensure that local history is protected in Taney County, Missouri.

Please join us again next time for another "OzarksWatch Video Magazine."

[music playing]