For the first time in several years, we returned to the Hawken House Hearth Room, gathering in-person on August 6  to hear guest speaker Kristen Layne Anderson present the first of three scheduled Missouri Bicentennial history lectures. Dr. Anderson is an associate history professor at Webster University, where she specializes in 19th century U.S. social history, teaching a wide variety of courses on the Civil War and Reconstruction, women’s history, St. Louis, the American West, the Gilded Age, and the Progressive Era. She is the author of several scholarly publications, including her first book: Abolitionizing Missouri: German Immigrants and Racial Ideology in 19th Century America  (LSU Press, 2016). She is currently working on a new book that examines how German immigrants remembered and commemorated their Civil War roles. (We are delighted to report that Kristen has already committed to a return speaking engagement on October 8.)