March 16, 1819… William Franklin Switzler's Birthday
William Franklin Switzler, Missouri journalist, historian, politician, and public official, came in 1826 from Fayette County, Kentucky, where he was born March 16, 1819, to Fayette, Howard County, Missouri. Home study, a log school with one teacher, and Mt. Forest Academy, gave him his education. Under Judge Abiel Leonard and James S. Rollins, he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1842.
Before this time, in 1841, he edited the "Columbia Patriot." He began the "Missouri Statesman" in 1843, and continued to publish it for the next forty-six years. Often he has been called "Dean of Missouri Journalists," and the first building on the University of Missouri campus to be occupied by the journalism school was named for him.
In politics prior to the Civil War, he was a Whig and was three times elected to the State House of Representatives. During the war, he was a decided, though conservative, Unionist, and later joined the Democratic Party. He ran twice for the United States House of Representatives and both times received a fairly large majority. But the radical Secretary of State "went behind the returns" and each time gave the election to Switler's opponents, although the decisions were strongly contested. Switzler attended the state constitutional conventions of 1865 and 1875, with a particular interest in education. Although not a practicing lawyer, he was one of Missouri's best constitutional lawyers and constitutional law writers.
President Lincoln, whose election he had opposed, appointed Switzler secretary of the Arkansas provisional government in 1862. "Colonel," by which he was known, came from his appointment in 1863 as provost marshal of the Ninth Congressional District of Missouri. President Cleveland appointed him chief of the Bureau of Statistics in 1885.
Among his writings, History of Missouri is the most outstanding. His "History of the University of Missouri," on which he was working at the time of his death in Columbia, Missouri May 24, 1906, has never been published, but the manuscript is in the possession of the university.
The first and second page to William F. Switzler's "History of the University of Missouri" manuscript. For primary source material see…