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Acknowledgments A long project such as this incurs many debts, both professional and personal. This book began as a dissertation at the University of Kansas (KU) and has since evolved into a much more readable book. Jonathan Earle was an exceptional adviser (translation: humane and fair) and remains an academic role model. Others at KU, including Peter Mancall, Joshua Rosenbloom, Ted Wilson, Rita Napier, Jennifer Weber, Kim Warren, and Don Worster, provided insight, assistance, and high standards. The Humanities and Western Civilization Program served as home for most of my time in Kansas. The interdisciplinary mix of scholars and students, as well as its extraordinary director, James Woelfel, provided friendship and support for five years. Jim, David Dewar, Greg Douros, Brian Drake, Matt Waldschlagel, and Jane Pierce helped make working in Bailey Hall not only tolerable but also occasionally fun. Ten years before I started at KU, I took a history class from Oliver Rink, at California State University, Bakersfield, that convinced me to abandon a business major and pursue history. Now retired, Oliver was a great teacher and mentor. I can thank him (or maybe blame him) for my career as a historian. The State Historical Society of Missouri helped with research through a Richard S. Brownlee grant, and Stephen F. Austin State University provided a summer faculty research grant. Iowa State University (ISU) generously provided summer research funds, course releases, and faculty grants during revision. ISU is wonderful place to teach and write; the state is also a great place to call home. The chair of the history department, Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, read the entire manuscript and saved me from embarrassing errors of fact and clarity. My colleague Kevin Hill also read every chapter and gave many useful sug- 166 Acknowledgments gestions, reminding me that paragraphs should be less than an entire page in length. Others have commented on various stages of this book, including Susan Sessions Rugh, Jeannie Whayne, David Blanke, Steven Sodergren, Maddalena Marinari, and several anonymous reviewers. Their feedback has improved my work greatly. The staffs at the Missouri Historical Museum in St. Louis and at the State Historical Society of Missouri (SHSM) have been extremely helpful as well. The people at the University of Iowa Press have been superb, with special thanks for Catherine Cocks. Her interest in this project, and support and patience, is greatly appreciated. James Harlan at the University of Missouri helped with a map, while Anne Cox at SHSM assisted with images for this book. Robert Burchfield completed outstanding copyediting work, and his dedication is greatly appreciated. Parts of chapter 6 first appeared in “Mothers of Commerce: Antebellum Missouri Women and the Family Farm,” Missouri Historical Review 104 (July 2010): 187–197. Sections of chapters 7 and 8 were first published in “Frontier Capitalism: Market Migration to Rural Central Missouri, 1815–1860,” a chapter in Southern Society and Its Transformations , 1790–1860, edited by Susanna Delfino, Michele Gillespie, and Louis M. Kyriakoudes (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2011). Friends from outside academia, or “normal people,” as a student once commented , have provided essential distraction and friendship for many years. Greg Olson was my scoutmaster and has been an inspiration and a model of human compassion and decency for most of my life. I cannot thank him enough for all that he has done for me. Patrick Witcher has been a good friend and ally for more than fifteen years. He helped make teaching in inner-city California bearable and sometimes humorous. Eugenia Morain and Angela Capobianco have served as surrogate family for many, many years, and their love and grace is a gift. This book is, in part, dedicated to my grandfather Henry George Welcome, who did not live to see his grandson finish his education. Hank never enjoyed the privilege of a college education, but nonetheless he inspired me to pursue my dreams inside academia with his own intellectual pursuits. My greatest debt is to Yana Reid, who has lived with the book almost as long as I have. She endured writing and editing on our honeymoon in New Mexico, in addition to the varied insults and abuses that academia inflicts on spouses and partners. I cannot adequately express how much I appreciate her selflessness, humor, patience, and love. ...

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