On Monday, the Missouri House will conduct a ceremony honoring the induction of Marie Watkins Oliver (1854-1944) into the Hall of Famous Missourians.
The following information is taken from Wikipedia. Born Marie Elizabeth Watkins in Ray County, she married Robert Burett Oliver, who subsequently became elected to the Missouri Senate in 1882. They subsequently moved to Cape Girardeau in 1896. Subsequently, she became active in the Missouri Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
In 1908, the Daughters of the American Revolution noticed that the State did not have an official flag. In 1861, Major-General Sterling Price, who attempted to turn Missouri into a Confederate state after initially opposing secession, designed a blue merino flag with the Missouri coat of arms in gold that the Missouri State Guard used. The Missouri State Guard was formed to resist a feared union invasion and fought alongside Confederate troops during the Civil War in Missouri. But Price was eventually driven out of the state and the flag was relinquished after the end of the Civil War.
Oliver chaired the committee that designed the flag, writing to secretaries of state in every state and territory to find out how their flags were designed. She got a response from every one, and subsequently designed a flag featuring the Missouri Coat of Arms, encircled by 24 stars that represented Missouri’s status as the 24th state of the union. Oliver’s friend, Mary Kochtitzky, painted the design.
In 1909, the Kochtitzky flag was proposed in the Missouri Senate and passed. However, the House was pushing a different flag, the Holcomb Flag. According to the March 1st, 1909 University Missourian, Dr. N.R. Holcomb got his idea from a constituent who was a country school teacher. He, Secretary of State Cornelius Roach, and Superintendent of Schools H.A. Gass designed their own version, which has 11 stripes, which represent the fact that Missouri was the 11th state after the original 13 to be admitted into the Union. Like the Kochtitzky flag, it had 24 stars to symbolize the fact that Missouri is the 24th state of the union.
The bill to pass the Kochtitzky flag passed again in 1911, but again failed to pass the House. Later that year, the Missouri State Capitol burned, destroying Kochtitzky’s original work. However Oliver and a friend. S.D. MacFarland, recreated the design in silk. This time, it passed both houses in the 1913 session and was signed into law by Governor Elliot Woolfolk Major.
In 1961, her son, Allen, gave the flag to the State of Missouri, where it was put on display until it began to deteriorate. However, a group of elementary students in 1988 raised enough money to restore the silk flag, and it is once again on display.
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