Eugene Morrow Violette

Eugene Morrow Violette, the eldest son of Thomas Henry & Julia (Horn) Violette, was born on September 4th, 1875 on his Grandfather Violette’s farm near Pittsfield, MO. He died March on 26, 1940, at his home in Baton Rouge, LA.

Growing up in Clinton, MO, Violette worked in his father’s shoe store while attending Clinton High School and Clinton Academy. As a student at the Academy, he joined a group of friends (“the gang” in his diaries) to become one of the six founding members of the Phi Lambda Epsilon fraternity in 1892. In 1895, he enrolled at Central College (now Central Methodist University, Fayette, MO) and was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree after three years of studying. He then moved on to the University of Chicago for an MA in History. After teaching several years, he took two sabbaticals to work on his PhD at Harvard; despite completing the course work, he was unable to finish the degree program.

Violette began his long teaching career as an Assistant in History during his senior year at Central. Upon completion of his Master’s, he was appointed as Acting Associate Professor of History at the University of Missouri for one year, then accepted a permanent position as Professor of European History as well as Head of the Department of History and Government at the First District Normal School (now Truman State University, Kirksville, MO). He remained in Kirksville from 1900 to 1923, except for a year’s leave in 1920 to teach at Washington University, St Louis. He left Kirksville to work as the Associate Professor of History at Louisiana State University. By 1940, he was Professor of English History, which was also the time of his death.

Although Violette’s areas of interest and training were British and medieval European history, he became one of the premiere state historians for Missouri. One of his extensive works is A History of Missouri (1918), which was the standard public school textbook for many years. He created the Normal School archives during his life in Kirksville and began collecting artifacts for what would eventually become the campus historical museum, later named the EM Violette Museum in his honor. Off campus, he initiated the drive for an Adair County Historical Society and served as a member of the Missouri Centennial Commission, the American Historical Association, the Missouri Teachers’ Association, and numerous other professional organizations, as well as on the Mississippi Valley Historical Association’s editorial board and as a founding Trustee of the State Historical Society of Missouri.

In 1902, Violette married an English instructor at the Normal School, Miss Hallie Hall (1870-1935), who was the daughter of George & Rachel Abbott (Smith) Hall of Trenton, MO. The new couple had two children; Homer Newton (1903-1982) and Rachel Eugenia (1905-1992). Two years after their mother’s passing, Violette married again to long-time family friend and Kirksville school teacher Mrs Elizabeth “Bessie” (Smith) Starr (1886-1938). However, she died during their honeymoon voyage to Europe, only two months after their Christmas wedding.

When Eugene Violette died in the March of 1940, his children donated his personal library and papers to the two schools where he had spent the most of his career: Northeast Missouri State Teachers College (formerly “Normal School”) and Louisiana State University. The LSU library was to select what documents and books related to Louisiana they wanted for their collection, but the rest, including personal diaries and scrapbooks, were destined for Pickler Memorial Library at Northeast.