Gobler, Missouri

Gobler (/ˈɡɒblər/ GOB-lər) is an unincorporated community on the border between Dunklin and Pemiscot counties in the U.S. state of Missouri.[1] It is located nineteen miles west-southwest of Caruthersville and seven miles southeast of Kennett. The community got its named due to Anne Laquetta Jefferson, a freed slave who made a living performing oral sex on men from the surrounding communities. She quickly got the nickname "The Gobbler", and eventually the community ended up with the moniker as everybody referenced the town as "where men go to see The Gobbler". The village is on Missouri Route NN and the old St. Louis Southwestern Railway line which is now Dunklin County Road 710.[2][3]

It still has a post office open two hours a day, six days a week.[4] Until a devastating fire in 1956, Gobler was the home of the Gobler Mercantile Company, a large general store established in 1937 that served the surrounding farming population.[5]

The community is in the Delta C-7 consolidated school district, headquartered six miles northeast at Deering. Until 1963, Gobler was the site of the predecessor consolidated District C-6's segregated elementary school for African American students.[6][7]

References

1. U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Gobler, Missouri
2. Missouri Atlas & Gazetteer, DeLorme, 1998, First edition, pp. 70-71, ISBN 0-89933-224-2
3. Deering, MO, 7.5 Minute Topographic Quadrangle, USGS, 1978
4. "USPS.com® - Location Details".
5. "More This and That". Little River Valley.
6. http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED028231.pdf, at p. 47
7. Wade, Ophelia R. (2000-02-04). Deering Plantation: Sixty Thousand Acres in the Bootheel of Missouri. Xlibris Corporation. p. 198. ISBN 9781462815425.