It often feels like Friday comes around more than once a week. Don’t get me wrong—I like Fridays as much as the next person. But when it’s the one day each week you’re responsible for writing a blog post, it can arrive a little sooner than you expect. More than once I’ve woken up on a Friday morning still waiting for inspiration for that week’s blog post to arrive. Fortunately, however, that was not the case this week.
You could almost say that the inspiration for this week’s post practically fell into my lap.
A phone conversation with a gentleman from Cape Girardeau earlier in the week had me scanning the shelves of our library last Friday afternoon, looking for a binder he said should be there. It seems like every time I peruse those shelves, something new jumps out at me. While I did not find the particular binder I was looking for (as it turns out, it was already sitting in my office—I just didn’t realize it was the one I was looking for!), I did find a binder labeled Lottes Articles.
“Is this Lottes as in Doc Lottes?” I wondered to myself. Sure enough! Inside were a series of articles written for the Perry County Republican in 1964—the 125th anniversary of the Saxon Immigration. Doc Lottes was evidently an avid historian as well as a dentist.
Curious, I began paging through the articles. Together they offer a fascinating narrative of the early history of East Perry County, before, during, and after the Saxon Immigration. What made the discovery even more interesting was the author himself. The “Doc Lottes” behind the articles is the same Edward “Doc” Lottes whose dental equipment is currently on display in our Cavities & Cures exhibit here at the museum. While many in the community would have known him as their dentist, these articles reveal another side of him as well—an avid local historian with a clear interest in preserving and sharing the story of East Perry County.
I’ll share the first two in the series today and the rest next week. That way I can wake up next Friday already knowing what I’m going to write about!
Until next week! Denise Hellwege, Director