Veiled Prophet Ball
Encyclopedia
The Veiled Prophet Ball (commonly referred to as the VP Ball) is a dance held each December in St. Louis
, Missouri
, USA
, by a secret society
named the "Veiled Prophet Organization" (often referred to as "the VP"), first founded by prominent St. Louisans in 1878, and originally part of the Veiled Prophet Fair (or "VP Fair"), which today is Fair St. Louis. The founders' intent was to create a local celebration in the likeness of Mardi Gras
, eventually including pageantry and costuming as well as a parade
with floats. Each year, one member of the Veiled Prophet Organization is chosen to serve as the "Veiled Prophet of Khorassan," donning a sheik-like garb to preside over the VP Ball. Five of the debutantes are chosen by secret process to form the "Veiled Prophet's Court of Honor," of which one is chosen to be crowned the "Queen of Love and Beauty" by the Veiled Prophet.
, however, and the Veiled Prophet Fair was in part an attempt to reclaim pre-eminence for the city as a manufacturing center and agricultural shipping point from rapidly growing Chicago
. On March 20, 1878, Charles Slayback, a grain broker, former Confederate cavalryman, and New Orleans native, called a meeting of local business leaders at the Lindell Hotel. Together with his brother Alonzo, Slayback invented a mythology for an annual fair meant to revive interest in the commercial fairs, and especially to increase participation in harvest-season events. From Irish poet Thomas Moore
, the Slaybacks borrowed the name of the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan
, adapting features of their home-city's Mystick Krewe of Comus. In their version, the Prophet was a world traveler who had made St. Louis his home base. The first parade and grand ball were staged on October 8, 1878, attracting over 50,000 spectators.
The fair was also intended to re-assert the social hierarchy which had been challenged by the general strike of 1877, claimed by Spencer (p. 18) to have been the first and most successful of its type, involving large numbers of African American
workmen as well. Though the fair has regularly been characterized as "a way of healing the wounds of a bitter labor-management fight," Spencer (8) suggests "the first Veiled Prophet parade was more a show of force than a gesture of healing."
The Prophet was selected from among St. Louis's business and civic elite. The first prophet was Police Commissioner John G. Priest (who had been energetic in suppressing the 1877 strike). Although the identity of a given year's Grand Oracle, or Veiled Prophet, was officially a secret, early holders of the office were reported to include Col. A.W. Slayback, Capt. Frank Gaiennie, John A. Scudder, Henry C. Haarstick, George Bain, Robert P. Tansey, George H. Morgan, Col. J. C. Normile, Wallace Delafield, John B. Maude, Dr. D. P. Rowland, Charles E. Slayback, Leigh I. Knapp, David B Gould, Henry Paschell, H.I. Kent, Dr. E. Pretorious, Win. H. Thompson, and Win. A. Hargadine. Today, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
speculates each year on the identity of the Veiled Prophet.
The Queen of Love and Beauty, and later maids of honor, would be selected by the Veiled Prophet from among the debutantes who had received invitations (the list of invitees determined by a process never made public, though the supply of tickets was limited to members of the VP organization, also of murky constitution, and the assignment of these non-transferrable tickets required the organization's approval). The Veiled Prophet would dance the "Royal Quadrille" with the Queen, and then award her some keepsake of the occasion. Over the years, the Queens and their courts received pearl necklaces or silver tiaras, which became family heirlooms (as did the elaborate invitations themselves). The 1928 Veiled Prophet Ball illustrates the seriousness with which the event was regarded as an instrument of social control. For the fiftieth anniversary celebration records list "no queen," as Mary Ambrose Smith had secretly married Dr. Thomas Birdsall days earlier, violating the rule that the Queen of Love and Beauty must be a "maiden." In a 1979 interview with the St. Louis Times, Smith recalled how the Veiled Prophet "gave her travelling money and told her to 'begone, don't register at any large hotels, and don't use your real name.' ... Smith was 'made to feel she disgraced her family. None of her friends stuck by her (she was told she could not visit their houses), she was never invited to another VP ball, her picture was removed from the collection of queens' portraits at the Missouri Historical Society
, and her name was deleted from the Social Register
.'"
The ball was suspended between 1943 and 1945, due to World War II
. Upon its resumption, there was increasing objection to the use of a civic facility for such a socially exclusive event. In the 1950s, the exclusive Chase Park Plaza Hotel
constructed the opulent Khorassan Ballroom specifically for the purpose of hosting the annual debutante ball, and it was moved from the former venue, Kiel Auditorium
. In recent years, the Ball has been held at the Downtown
St. Louis Hyatt at the Arch.
protests, resulting in numerous arrests.
The event deliberately had displaced the parades originally held by the trade unions, and occasionally the unions would stage events to mock the pretensions of the VP Ball ; The leading socialist and working-class newspaper St. Louis Labor vilified the event and its organizers for decades, although the parade still attracted heavy crowds and elicited fascination. In 1949, for the first time, the ball was broadcast on KSD-TV (now KSDK
), and it was estimated that over 80% of area viewers tuned in. According to historian Thomas M. Spencer, "Most St. Louisans probably enjoyed the 'fairy tale' nature of it. By watching the ball, they were vicariously living the experiences of the elites dancing across their television screens." According to Harry Levins, "The parade was aimed at boosting the spirit of the city's common folk. The ball was aimed at reassuring the city's elite of their exclusive status." The early pageants had been partially meant to move working-class viewers to awe at the accomplishments of great men – all of whom were said to be ancestors of the Prophet. According to Spencer, this elite-oriented event replaced more pluralistic celebrations, and placed workingmen in a passive rather than active role, not merely in the celebration, but in the mythology
asserted for the history and economic life of the city.
Local news media continued to cover the ball at length, printing long lists of attendees from locally prominent families. However, from the mid 1960s onward, there was increasing dissatisfaction with the use of civic resources for a celebration emphatically excluding all but the white elite. As late as the early 1960s, Jews were excluded not only as members but as guests. As the culmination of protests organized by Percy Green and the civil rights group Action Committee to Improve Opportunities for Negroes ("ACTION"), on December 22, 1972, in Kiel Auditorium, Gena Scott slid down a power cable and unmasked the Prophet, who was Monsanto Company executive vice president Tom K. Smith, according to the St. Louis Journalism Review (though the papers at the time claimed that the unmasking was too brief to allow for identification). Subsequently, Scott's car was bombed, and her apartment vandalized numerous times. The incident is the subject of Lucy Ferriss's memoir, "Unveiling the Prophet" (Ferriss's aunt, Ann Chittenden Ferriss, had been the 1931 Queen of Love and Beauty). The unveiling of the Prophet was the most dramatic disruption in ACTION's long campaign (1965-1976) to encourage the many CEOs in the VP Organization to hire larger numbers of minority workers, and even to disband the organization so that public and private funds could be spent on worthier projects. Spencer sees the event as a crucial moment in a long process of disintegration of the civic unity and class harmony which the VP Fair claimed to celebrate. Indeed, according to Spencer (138-9), by the late 1970s, the wives and daughters of the elite, for whom the event constituted a sort of marriage-market, had become resistant to its inherent sexism. Even members of the VP Organization itself began to express distaste: William Maritz, a one-time Veiled Prophet himself, reported, "'A lot of members' in the late 1970s 'felt uneasy with the social connotations' and that 'people were saying 'get that godamned ball off of television, don't force that on the community."
The subversive act foregrounded what, according to Thomas Spencer, had been the classist underpinnings of the event from its inception. Only in 1979 did the Veiled Prophet Organization admit its first black members, and in 1981, fair officials were confronted with accusations of racism when they closed the Eads Bridge
to pedestrian access from mostly black East St. Louis. According to Ronald Henges (Spencer 140), "People just didn't want other people flaunting their wealth and their position." The event lies behind the present day Fair St. Louis, held on the riverfront, which began as the "Veiled Prophet Fair" in 1979, and was renamed to delete all reference to the "Veiled Prophet" in 1992.
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
, Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
, USA
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, by a secret society
Secret society
A secret society is a club or organization whose activities and inner functioning are concealed from non-members. The society may or may not attempt to conceal its existence. The term usually excludes covert groups, such as intelligence agencies or guerrilla insurgencies, which hide their...
named the "Veiled Prophet Organization" (often referred to as "the VP"), first founded by prominent St. Louisans in 1878, and originally part of the Veiled Prophet Fair (or "VP Fair"), which today is Fair St. Louis. The founders' intent was to create a local celebration in the likeness of Mardi Gras
Mardi Gras
The terms "Mardi Gras" , "Mardi Gras season", and "Carnival season", in English, refer to events of the Carnival celebrations, beginning on or after Epiphany and culminating on the day before Ash Wednesday...
, eventually including pageantry and costuming as well as a parade
Parade
A parade is a procession of people, usually organized along a street, often in costume, and often accompanied by marching bands, floats or sometimes large balloons. Parades are held for a wide range of reasons, but are usually celebrations of some kind...
with floats. Each year, one member of the Veiled Prophet Organization is chosen to serve as the "Veiled Prophet of Khorassan," donning a sheik-like garb to preside over the VP Ball. Five of the debutantes are chosen by secret process to form the "Veiled Prophet's Court of Honor," of which one is chosen to be crowned the "Queen of Love and Beauty" by the Veiled Prophet.
Origins
The event had its roots in the agricultural and mechanical fairs held in St. Louis beginning in 1856. These languished in the years after the American Civil WarAmerican Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, however, and the Veiled Prophet Fair was in part an attempt to reclaim pre-eminence for the city as a manufacturing center and agricultural shipping point from rapidly growing Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. On March 20, 1878, Charles Slayback, a grain broker, former Confederate cavalryman, and New Orleans native, called a meeting of local business leaders at the Lindell Hotel. Together with his brother Alonzo, Slayback invented a mythology for an annual fair meant to revive interest in the commercial fairs, and especially to increase participation in harvest-season events. From Irish poet Thomas Moore
Thomas Moore
Thomas Moore was an Irish poet, singer, songwriter, and entertainer, now best remembered for the lyrics of The Minstrel Boy and The Last Rose of Summer. He was responsible, with John Murray, for burning Lord Byron's memoirs after his death...
, the Slaybacks borrowed the name of the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan
Al-Muqanna
Al-Muqanna‘ was a Persian man who claimed to be a prophet and is viewed as a heretic by mainstream Muslims.- Biography : Al-Muqanna‘ was an ethnic Persian from Merv named Hashim ibn Hakim, originally a clothes pleater. He became a commander for Abū Muslim of Khorasan...
, adapting features of their home-city's Mystick Krewe of Comus. In their version, the Prophet was a world traveler who had made St. Louis his home base. The first parade and grand ball were staged on October 8, 1878, attracting over 50,000 spectators.
The fair was also intended to re-assert the social hierarchy which had been challenged by the general strike of 1877, claimed by Spencer (p. 18) to have been the first and most successful of its type, involving large numbers of African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
workmen as well. Though the fair has regularly been characterized as "a way of healing the wounds of a bitter labor-management fight," Spencer (8) suggests "the first Veiled Prophet parade was more a show of force than a gesture of healing."
The Prophet was selected from among St. Louis's business and civic elite. The first prophet was Police Commissioner John G. Priest (who had been energetic in suppressing the 1877 strike). Although the identity of a given year's Grand Oracle, or Veiled Prophet, was officially a secret, early holders of the office were reported to include Col. A.W. Slayback, Capt. Frank Gaiennie, John A. Scudder, Henry C. Haarstick, George Bain, Robert P. Tansey, George H. Morgan, Col. J. C. Normile, Wallace Delafield, John B. Maude, Dr. D. P. Rowland, Charles E. Slayback, Leigh I. Knapp, David B Gould, Henry Paschell, H.I. Kent, Dr. E. Pretorious, Win. H. Thompson, and Win. A. Hargadine. Today, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is the major city-wide newspaper in St. Louis, Missouri. Although written to serve Greater St. Louis, the Post-Dispatch is one of the largest newspapers in the Midwestern United States, and is available and read as far west as Kansas City, Missouri, as far south as...
speculates each year on the identity of the Veiled Prophet.
The Queen of Love and Beauty, and later maids of honor, would be selected by the Veiled Prophet from among the debutantes who had received invitations (the list of invitees determined by a process never made public, though the supply of tickets was limited to members of the VP organization, also of murky constitution, and the assignment of these non-transferrable tickets required the organization's approval). The Veiled Prophet would dance the "Royal Quadrille" with the Queen, and then award her some keepsake of the occasion. Over the years, the Queens and their courts received pearl necklaces or silver tiaras, which became family heirlooms (as did the elaborate invitations themselves). The 1928 Veiled Prophet Ball illustrates the seriousness with which the event was regarded as an instrument of social control. For the fiftieth anniversary celebration records list "no queen," as Mary Ambrose Smith had secretly married Dr. Thomas Birdsall days earlier, violating the rule that the Queen of Love and Beauty must be a "maiden." In a 1979 interview with the St. Louis Times, Smith recalled how the Veiled Prophet "gave her travelling money and told her to 'begone, don't register at any large hotels, and don't use your real name.' ... Smith was 'made to feel she disgraced her family. None of her friends stuck by her (she was told she could not visit their houses), she was never invited to another VP ball, her picture was removed from the collection of queens' portraits at the Missouri Historical Society
Missouri Historical Society
The Missouri Historical Society was founded in St. Louis in 1866. Founding members created the historical society "for the purpose of saving from oblivion the early history of the city and state."- Organization :...
, and her name was deleted from the Social Register
Social Register
Specific to the United States, the Social Register is a directory of names and addresses of prominent American families who form the social elite, . The "Directory" automatically includes the President of the United States and the First Family, and in the past always included the U.S. Senators and...
.'"
The ball was suspended between 1943 and 1945, due to World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Upon its resumption, there was increasing objection to the use of a civic facility for such a socially exclusive event. In the 1950s, the exclusive Chase Park Plaza Hotel
Chase Park Plaza Hotel
The Chase Park Plaza, located at 212 N. Kingshighway in the Central West End, St. Louis, Missouri, is a combination of two buildings housing a condominium tower , hotel , cinema, and several restaurants and bars, all constructed between 1920 and 1930.The hotel replaced nearby Buckingham Hotel as...
constructed the opulent Khorassan Ballroom specifically for the purpose of hosting the annual debutante ball, and it was moved from the former venue, Kiel Auditorium
Kiel Auditorium
Kiel Auditorium was an indoor arena, in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. It was the home of the Saint Louis University basketball team and hosted the NBA's St. Louis Hawks, from 1955-1968....
. In recent years, the Ball has been held at the Downtown
Downtown St. Louis
Downtown St. Louis is the central business district of St. Louis, Missouri, the hub of tourism and entertainment, and the anchor of the St. Louis metropolitan area. The downtown is bounded by Cole Street to the north, the river front to the east, Chouteau Avenue to the south, and Jefferson Avenue...
St. Louis Hyatt at the Arch.
1960s and later
The ball, parade and fair became an established St. Louis tradition, though it was not without controversy. According to the official St. Louis city government website, "The traditional VP celebration has represented for St. Louisans a perceived link between different components of the community in a holiday celebration, while also reinforcing the notion of a benevolent cultural elite." The event had the effect of foregrounding, rather than soothing, class conflicts. Indeed, as early as 1882, public objections were made to the ethnic stereotypes represented by some of the parade's floats (Spencer 45). Assaults on the floats with pea-shooters and less innocuous projectiles came to be a predictable part of the parade, with confectioners' shops actually stocking them in anticipation of the parade, in a kind of institutionalized defiance (Spencer, 74). By 1969, the ball was the object of civil rightsCivil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
protests, resulting in numerous arrests.
The event deliberately had displaced the parades originally held by the trade unions, and occasionally the unions would stage events to mock the pretensions of the VP Ball ; The leading socialist and working-class newspaper St. Louis Labor vilified the event and its organizers for decades, although the parade still attracted heavy crowds and elicited fascination. In 1949, for the first time, the ball was broadcast on KSD-TV (now KSDK
KSDK
KSDK, Channel 5, is the NBC-affiliated television station in St. Louis, Missouri. KSDK is owned and operated by Gannett Company, and the station's transmitter is located in Marlborough, Missouri. The station broadcasts a digital signal on UHF channel 35, using its former analog channel assignment...
), and it was estimated that over 80% of area viewers tuned in. According to historian Thomas M. Spencer, "Most St. Louisans probably enjoyed the 'fairy tale' nature of it. By watching the ball, they were vicariously living the experiences of the elites dancing across their television screens." According to Harry Levins, "The parade was aimed at boosting the spirit of the city's common folk. The ball was aimed at reassuring the city's elite of their exclusive status." The early pageants had been partially meant to move working-class viewers to awe at the accomplishments of great men – all of whom were said to be ancestors of the Prophet. According to Spencer, this elite-oriented event replaced more pluralistic celebrations, and placed workingmen in a passive rather than active role, not merely in the celebration, but in the mythology
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
asserted for the history and economic life of the city.
Local news media continued to cover the ball at length, printing long lists of attendees from locally prominent families. However, from the mid 1960s onward, there was increasing dissatisfaction with the use of civic resources for a celebration emphatically excluding all but the white elite. As late as the early 1960s, Jews were excluded not only as members but as guests. As the culmination of protests organized by Percy Green and the civil rights group Action Committee to Improve Opportunities for Negroes ("ACTION"), on December 22, 1972, in Kiel Auditorium, Gena Scott slid down a power cable and unmasked the Prophet, who was Monsanto Company executive vice president Tom K. Smith, according to the St. Louis Journalism Review (though the papers at the time claimed that the unmasking was too brief to allow for identification). Subsequently, Scott's car was bombed, and her apartment vandalized numerous times. The incident is the subject of Lucy Ferriss's memoir, "Unveiling the Prophet" (Ferriss's aunt, Ann Chittenden Ferriss, had been the 1931 Queen of Love and Beauty). The unveiling of the Prophet was the most dramatic disruption in ACTION's long campaign (1965-1976) to encourage the many CEOs in the VP Organization to hire larger numbers of minority workers, and even to disband the organization so that public and private funds could be spent on worthier projects. Spencer sees the event as a crucial moment in a long process of disintegration of the civic unity and class harmony which the VP Fair claimed to celebrate. Indeed, according to Spencer (138-9), by the late 1970s, the wives and daughters of the elite, for whom the event constituted a sort of marriage-market, had become resistant to its inherent sexism. Even members of the VP Organization itself began to express distaste: William Maritz, a one-time Veiled Prophet himself, reported, "'A lot of members' in the late 1970s 'felt uneasy with the social connotations' and that 'people were saying 'get that godamned ball off of television, don't force that on the community."
The subversive act foregrounded what, according to Thomas Spencer, had been the classist underpinnings of the event from its inception. Only in 1979 did the Veiled Prophet Organization admit its first black members, and in 1981, fair officials were confronted with accusations of racism when they closed the Eads Bridge
Eads Bridge
The Eads Bridge is a combined road and railway bridge over the Mississippi River at St. Louis, connecting St. Louis and East St. Louis, Illinois....
to pedestrian access from mostly black East St. Louis. According to Ronald Henges (Spencer 140), "People just didn't want other people flaunting their wealth and their position." The event lies behind the present day Fair St. Louis, held on the riverfront, which began as the "Veiled Prophet Fair" in 1979, and was renamed to delete all reference to the "Veiled Prophet" in 1992.
Veiled Prophet Queens
Selected Veiled Prophet Queens, since 1878.- 1878 Susie Slayback
- 1885 Virginia Joy
- 1886 Louise Scott
- 1887 [No Queen nor Royal Quardille due to visit of Mr. and Mrs. Grover ClevelandGrover ClevelandStephen Grover Cleveland was the 22nd and 24th president of the United States. Cleveland is the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms and therefore is the only individual to be counted twice in the numbering of the presidents...
(U.S. President)] - 1888 Louise Gaiennie
- 1889 - Wain (from Cleveland)
- 1890 Kate Hill
- 1891 July Thompson
- 1892 Ellen Sturgis
- 1893 Florence Lucas
- 1894 Hester Bates Laughlin (the first of the crowned queens)
- 1895 Bessie Kingsland
- 1896 Louise McCreery
- 1897 -
- 1898 -
- 1899 -
- 1900 Susan Larkin Thomson
- 1901 Emily Catlin Wickham
- 1902 -
- 1903 -
- 1904 -
- 1905 Julia G. Cabanné
- 1906 -
- 1907 -
- 1908 Dorothy Shapleigh
- 1909 Susan Carleton
- 1910 Lucy Norvell
- 1911 -
- 1912 Jane Taylor
- 1913 –
- 1914 -
- 1915 Jane Shapleigh
- 1916 -
- 1917 (No ball because of World War I)
- 1918 (No ball because of World War I)
- 1919 Marian Franciscus Falk
- 1920 Ada R. Johnson
- 1921 Eleanor Simmons
- 1922 Alice Busch
- 1923 Grace Wallace
- 1924 Mary Virginia Collins
- 1925 Maud Miller Streett
- 1926 Martha Love
- 1927 Anne Farrar Semple
- 1928 Mary Ambrose Smith
- 1929 Jean Wright Ford
- 1930 Jane Perry Francis
- 1931 Ann Chittenden Ferriss
- 1932 Myrtle McGrew Lambert
- 1933 Jane Alva Johnson
- 1934 Jane Wells
- 1935 Lila Marshall Childress
- 1936 Susan Elizabeth Thompson
- 1937 Nancy Lee Morrill
- 1938 Laura Hale Rand
- 1939 Jane Howard Smith
- 1940 Rosalie McRee
- 1941 Barbara Wear
- 1942 (No ball because of World War II)
- 1943 (No ball because of World War II)
- 1944 (No ball because of World War II)
- 1945 (No ball because of World War II)
- 1946 Anne Kennett Farrar Desloge
- 1947 Dorothy Claggett Danforth
- 1948 Helen Dozier Conant
- 1949 Carol Moon Gardner
- 1950 Eleanor Koehler
- 1951 Mary Kennard Wallace
- 1952 Sally Baker Shepley
- 1953 Julia Terry
- 1954 Barbara Anne Whittemore
- 1955 Audrey Faust Wallace
- 1956 Helene Brown Bakewell
- 1957 Carol Lammert Culver
- 1958 Carolyn Lee Niedringhaus
- 1959 Laura Rand Orthwein
- 1960 Sally Ford Curby
- 1961 Anne Marie Baldwin
- 1962 Diane Waring Desloge
- 1963 Anne Kennard Newhard
- 1964 Alice Busch Condie
- 1965 Rebecca Wells Jones
- 1966 Jane Howard Shapleigh
- 1967 Rosalie McRee Ewing
- 1968 Rebecca Dixon Williams
- 1969 Josephine Carr Brodhead
- 1970 Phoebe Mercer Scott
- 1971 Lenita Collins Morrill
- 1972 Hope Florence Jones
- 1973 Susan Mitchell Conant
- 1974 -
- 1975 Sarah Moore Hitchcock
- 1976 Cynthia Gray Danforth
- 1977 Gertrude Marie Busch
- 1978 Elizabeth Courtney Johnson
- 1979 Susan Pierson Smith
- 1980 Eleanor Church Hawes
- 1981 Talbot Peters MacCarthy
- 1982 Alice Maritz
- 1983 Elizabeth Ford Johnston
- 1984 Mary Genevieve Hyland
- 1985 Jennifer Lee Knight
- 1986 Stephanie Marie Schnuck
- 1987 Emily Shepley Barksdale
- 1988 Elizabeth Gray Elliott
- 1989 Alice Marie Behan
- 1990 Carter Gedge Walker
- 1991 Katherine Hall McDonnell
- 1992 Kelly Taylor
- 1993 McKay Noland Baur
- 1994 Margaret Dunne Hager
- 1995 Martha Elizabeth Matthews
- 1996 Elizabeth Ann Bryan
- 1997 Rosalie Ewing Engler
- 1998 Josephine Marie Condie
- 1999 Elizabeth Claire KemperEllie KemperElizabeth Claire "Ellie" Kemper is an American actress, comedian and writer best known for her role as Erin Hannon in NBC's The Office.-Personal life:...
- 2000 Carolyn Elizabeth Schnuck
- 2001 Julia Ryerson Schlafly
- 2002 Lucy Hager Schnuck
- 2003 Lauren Morgan Dorsey Thomas
- 2004 Elizabeth Garrett Benoist
- 2005 Julie Anne Stupp
- 2006 Janice Hope Jones
- 2007 Katherine Remington Martin
- 2008 Elizabeth Bunn Hailand
- 2009 Melissa Benton Howe
- 2010 Laura Hogan Hollo
See also
- Fleur de Lis BallFleur de Lis BallThe Fleur de Lis Ball is a cotillion in St. Louis, Missouri, for the adolescents of affluent St. Louis Catholic society. It was started in 1958 by a group of Catholic upper-class women. It teaches etiquette and ballroom skills to teenage girls and boys. Four years of classes end with the Fleur...
- St. Louis's other debutante cotillion - Jewel BallJewel BallThe Jewel Ball is the main annual debutante ball held in Kansas City, Missouri, in the United States. It is organized by the Jewel Ball Foundation, which appoints a prominent Kansas City socialite to be the chairwoman. In 2007, it was held on June 9....
- another debutante cotillion in Missouri