The Stars and Stripes National Museum and Library
Located in Bloomfield, Missouri, the designated birthplace of the Stars and Stripes by the US Department of Defense, the Museum collects, documents, celebrates, interprets, and preserves material related to the creation and continuing history of the Stars and Stripes, our nation’s military newspaper.
Through exhibits and programs, The Stars and Stripes National Museum and Library offers a unique and important view of some of the most pivotal moments in modern history. The Museum highlights the history of the Stars and Stripes from the very first issue, printed by Union troops in November 1861, through the wars of the 20th century and into modern era.
In our publicly accessible archives, researchers can access our historical collection of the Stars and Stripes and related military history collections.
The Museum receives no government funding for operating expenses and admission is free, therefore we rely heavily on private donations to help pay the bills. Your donation helps us share these stories with future generations.
Learn More About the Stars & Stripes Museum by visiting these links or watching the videos. More info is at the bottom of this page.
the incomparable centerpiece of the Stars & Stripes Historic Region; the Stars & Stripes National Museum & Library located in historic Bloomfield, Missouri which arguably changed hands (21 times) more often than any other community in our nation during the course of our four year Civil War.
In the early days of the Civil War, General U.S. Grant, newly appointed Commander of the District of Cairo and empowered by General Fremont (and his self-appointed destiny) to build what would become the U.S. Army of the West and divide the Confederacy along the Mississippi River, sought to protect his right flank prior to engaging major Confederate forces along the Tennessee at Fort Donelson and elsewhere as he initially moved to engage Confederate troops at Belmont, sent 4,000 largely Illinois militia under fellow Illinoisian and friend, Col. Richard Ogelsby to block the “Swamp Fox”, Confederate General Jeff Thompson who’d occupied Bloomfield on strategically important Crowley’s Ridge leading north to Cape Girardeau, with the potential of threatening both Grant’s base in Cairo and the key city of St. Louis.
With inferior forces, Thompson quickly abandoned Bloomfield to Ogelsby and on November 8th, 1861, Ogelsby’s troops occupied a largely empty Bloomfield. And “feeling their oats”, 10 Illinois Union troopers who’d in their civilian lives worked at newspapers across Southern Illinois, decided to take advantage of the abandoned press of the local Bloomfield newspaper, to create their own newspaper to celebrate not only their victory, but what they had enlisted for…. The inevitable victory of Union, Liberty and Justice over insurrection. November 9th, 1861 they published that paper, the 1st publication, the 1st edition of what they called “the Stars & Stripes”.
Largely enlisted Union troopers at various times over the ensuing four years of their blood rimmed fight for liberty, deigned to print subsequent editions of what would become an iconic 160 plus year emblem of that struggle, and the core ongoing struggle for human liberty, justice and freedom, throughout the world which that emblem and the newspaper which exemplified it, have consistently and courageously communicated!
The Congressionally mandated/editorially independent Stars & Stripes is currently printed at 14 sites around the world, fearlessly telling that story, not only to our young men and women on the front lines of freedom, everywhere in this world, but also to the men and women in those countries which those young men and women also protect and defend!
In the last two decades of the 20th century, a history and heritage focused Bloomfield resident and his wife, Jim and Sue Mayo, got the word that one of only three remaining identified copies of that original printing had been found in an attic in Ohio. Jim obtained it and began the work of recruiting a team to create what would become the one and only home of the history and heritage of Stars and Stripes.
The current and expanding leadership of the effort, consisting of Stars and Stripes Alumni from around the nation and the world, journalists fearlessly embracing the importance of accurate and courageous communication and those who have always been willing to put their lives on the line for freedom, justice and liberty; from Missouri, our Nation and beyond…. These are the future of the Stars & Stripes, our national emblem of liberty and journalistic freedom!