General John J. Pershing Boyhood Home State Historic Site

The Pershings moved into this house when John was six, and the family stayed until 1885. His father had borrowed heavily to buy farmland, and in the Panic of 1873 the family lost everything but the house and one farm. The father took a job as a traveling salesman, and John and his brother James were left to run the farm. To pay for more schooling John taught at Prairie Mound School, earned a teaching degree at the Kirksville Normal School in June 1880, and went back to teach until the fall of 1881, when a newspaper notice of a competitive exam for West Point caught his eye. He sat it on October 20, 1881, and won the district's single appointment by a narrow margin.

The state bought the house in 1952 and in 1960, the centennial of his birth, dedicated it to Pershing and the soldiers who served under him in World War I. A statue of him by Carl Mose stands beside it, ringed by the Wall of Honor, a half-circle of granite tablets carrying veterans' names. In 2008 Frank Buckles, then 107 and the last surviving American veteran of that war, came to Laclede for the Memorial Day program. He was born in Bethany, about 40 miles west, and looking up at the statue he said, "He didn't do this for himself, but for all the boys."

Guided tours of the house are suspended until further notice for a construction project. The Pershing Memorial Museum and Leadership Archives, the school and the grounds remain open.