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A home-run celebration:

Bicentennial panel marks county’s 200th despite ‘curveballs’ thrown by pandemic

By Jeff Haldiman [email protected]

The festivities for the county’s 200th birthday began with a gathering at the original county seat, Marion.

Marc Ellinger didn’t imagine dealing with a pandemic when he and fellow members of the Cole County Bicentennial Committee were planning how to celebrate the county’s 200th anniversary.

Nonetheless, Ellinger said he is pleased with how the group has managed to hold events to mark the historic occasion and has developed plans for the remainder of the year — and preparing for the next big anniversary in 50 years.

“We had a good concept of using the community events that were already on the books, like the parish picnics, to get out and talk about the bicentennial, but the pandemic nixed most of those,” Ellinger said. “We were scheduled to do our kickoff on April 6 on the Capitol grounds, but that didn’t happen.”

The kickoff instead was held two months later on June 6 at the first home of Cole County government, Marion. Cole County was founded Nov. 16, 1820, and Marion was the county seat until 1829, when county government moved to Jefferson City.

“It was a really great day with a great crowd, and historian Bob Priddy gave so much new information about the founding of the county that no one knew about,” Ellinger said. “You have to adapt to what is thrown at you, and we had some big curveballs thrown at us, but we did well.”

Priddy spent several months researching Stephen Cole and found information about his older brother, Temple Cole.

He found two newspaper articles that identified Temple Cole as the person for whom Cole County was named, not Stephen, who most historians have said was the founder. In

1825, Priddy told the crowd, Missouri had 28 counties, and only five were named for living people. Other counties were being named for people killed by Indians — and Temple Cole was killed by Indians, not Stephen.

From what he’s been able to find, Ellinger said, Cole County is the longest continually running entity in Cole County.

“We’re older than the state of Missouri, which celebrates its bicentennial next year, and we’re older than Jefferson City, older than any existing business and older than any church,” Ellinger said.

Fifty year ago, Ellinger’s father, John, led the Cole County Sesquicentennial Committee. Ellinger was 3 at that time. He said the Bicentennial Committee has tried to do some things similar to what was done in 1970 for the 150th anniversary.

“The one thing we really tried to tie to the 150th celebration was the concept of the commemorative coins,” Ellinger said. “Fifty years ago, they did a bronze and silver coin. On one side was Cole County, and the other side was Lohman’s Landing. We thought that would be a really neat connection, so this year we did a brass coin and a silver coin with one side being Cole County and the other side having the County Courthouse.”

There are still coins available for purchase at Central Bank’s main facility at the corner of High and Madison streets, as well as at its downtown motor bank on East Miller Street and its facility on South Country Club Drive.

The coins are also available at Legends Bank in Taos, Mid-America Bank in Wardsville, Farmers Banks in Lohman and St. Thomas, as well as at Samuel’s Tuxedos on East High Street.

For the bicentennial celebration, they focused on recognizing the county’s smaller

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