Nodaway County Historical Society Museum

Stairway of the Stars

• Lynne Overman, movie actor
• Smiley Burnette, movie actor
• Alma Nash, a performer with the 1923 Ziegfeld Follies who returned to Maryville to teach music
• Sarah Caldwell, first female director of Metropolitan Opera
• Byron Archibald Dunn, author of various books about the Civil War
• Hamline E. Robinson, editor of Maryville Republican who accumulated a 5,000 library of books about the occult. He was a brother of artist Theodore Robinson.
• Elizabeth E. Stewart Howell, inventor whose 1891 patent is important in the history of the Lazy Susan
• Lafayette “Lafe” Dawson, attorney in the late 1800s for whom the former town of Dawson is named.
• Charles Dilling Bellows, Shorthorn cattle breeder who was also president of the Missouri State Fair and American Royal
• Joseph W. Cornelison, Deputy Administrator of the Panama Canal Commission, who was the highest ranking United States representative when the Panama Canal was transferred to Panama in 1999
• Lester Swaney, manager for Faustiana Farms for 30 years who trained or owned several champion horses
• Horace A. "Jimmy" Jones, horse trainer for Calumet Farms who trained two horses that won the Kentucky Derby
• Edwin Harris Colbert, Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History for 40 years
• John D. Hicks, historian who held positions at the University of Nebraska, University of Wisconsin, and University of California, Berkeley
• Hollis Newcomb White, holder of many patents regarding hydraulics
• Frank Felton, international expert on hereford breed.
• Bill Tobin, pro football manager and general manager of the Chicago Bears and Indianapolis Colts
• Vince Tobin, coach of the Arizona Cardinals
• Robert Partridge, head of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and a major general of the Civil Affairs Branch of the U.S. Army Reserves.
• Emma Holt Prather, first woman breeder of a Kentucky Derby winner
• John S. Bilby, owner of Bilby Ranch which sprawled from Missouri across the Southwest and was claimed to be the biggest in the United States
• Jesse D. Taylor, a World War II fighter pilot who owned LMP Steel
• Don Hollingsworth, develops and sells peonies throughout the world from his business Hollingsworth Peonies.
• Edward V. Condon, served with Harry Truman in 129th Field Artillery Regiment in France during World War I. He operated Condon's Corner Drug on the square in Maryville.
• Garvin Williams, who had a bluegrass lawn seed business and founded other businesses in Maryville including KNIM radio, Nodaway Lanes and B&W Sporting Goods.
• Leo Baumli, mule farmer whose mules included one the Gunsmoke mules named Ruth that belonged to Festus Haggen.
• Uel W. Lamkin, Northwest Missouri president