Lakeside Park was no doubt a suitable place for Southwest Missourians to take the governor’s advice and “abstain from their usual vocations” on Labor Day. The proclamation below was issued the same year as this postcard.

Old News

From the 3rd floor
of the Webb City Public Library

Labor Day has been a national holiday for 129 years

Webb City Area Genealogical Society
August 30, 2023

Before it became a federal holiday, Labor Day was recognized by labor activists and individual states. Oregon was the first state to pass a law recognizing Labor Day, on Feb. 21, 1887. Over the next few years more states passed laws creating the holiday and on June 28, 1894, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday.

Webb City Register
Monday, Sept. 4, 1905

To Observe Labor Day

Jefferson City, Mo., Aug. 28, 1905

Governor Folk Saturday issued the following Labor Day proclamation:

The national and state governments in recognition of the dignity of American labor, having set apart the first Monday in September of each year as a holiday in honor of those whose honest toil is the foundation of national happiness and prosperity and it being appropriate that all should join in doing honor to those who earn their bread in the sweat of their faces:

I, Joseph W. Folk, governor of said state, do hereby proclaim that Monday, Sept. 4, 1905, is Labor day, and a legal holiday in Missouri, and recommend that the people of Missouri, so far as may be practicable, abstain from their usual vocations on that day, and unite in their several localities in the exercises becoming to this occasion.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused to be affixed the great seal of the state of Missouri.

Done at office in the city of Jefferson, this 26th day of August.

Sentinel bound volumes are now in the Genealogy Room

The WCAGS has accepted ownership of the complete collection of bound volumes of the Webb City Sentinel, from 1983 (after the fire) until the final issue on Dec. 30, 2020.

Those issues can also be viewed on microfilm, along with much older issues.

Webb City Area Genealogical Society

WCAGS members staff the Genealogy Room on the third floor of the Webb City Public Library. Current hours are noon to 4 p.m. weekdays and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays. Meetings are held at 6 p.m. on the first Tuesday of each month in the Genealogy Room.

Everything you want to know about Jasper County Missouri Schools is available at a site compiled by Webb City Area Genealogical Society member Kathy Sidenstricker.