YouTube videos bring ‘Douglasville’ to life
Published 5:04 pm Saturday, August 8, 2026
HANNIBAL — Utilizing stories from the past that have long been shared within her family, Hannibal native Marjorie Frazier has created a YouTube video series designed to keep the time-honored stories alive.
To create these videos, Marjorie, who resides in Kansas City, is utilizing her own honed videography skills and her family’s rich oral story collection, blending them together with the technological marvels now available via AI.
The YouTube series, written in a family diary format, is titled “Douglasville: Stories from the Old Neighborhood.”
The landscape is the former Hannibal neighborhood known as Douglasville, where her grandparents Vincent (nicknamed Johnny) and Madie raised their large family.
Johnny Frazier is best remembered as a longtime chef at the Mark Twain Hotel, where it is said that all of his children, and some of his grandchildren, at one time or another, also worked.
Marjorie is the daughter of Margaret, who is among Johnny and Madie’s children.
The Fraziers owned their own home, which was located at 822 North St. The house was to the east of North Ninth Street, in the neighborhood once known as, as the series title suggests, Douglasville.
Vincent (Johnny) Frazier died in 1969 at the age of 71. The Hannibal City Directory of 1967 suggests that he was still working at the Mark Twain Hotel.
Madie Frazier moved to Chicago during the years following her husband’s death, where a number of her children had previously settled.
She died in 1984. Her children, listed as survivors in the newspaper Star of Cook County, Ill., on April 15, 1984, include four daughters and seven sons:
Mary Payne, Cook County, Ill. (born 1928);
Vincent Frazier Jr., Chicago (born 1929);
Harry B. Frazier, Washington, D.C. (born 1930);
John W. Frazier, Chicago (born 1932);
Walter Frazier, Kansas City (born 1933);
Addie Beckom, Chicago;
Margaret M. Parks, Kansas City (born 1935);
Mabel Johnson, Hannibal;
Joe Frazier, Hannibal (born 1937);
George Frazier, Chicago; and
James Frazier, Maywood, Ill. (born 1939).
(Dates obtained via census records.)
Dream fulfillment
Marjorie, who is raising two high school-age grandchildren, has always had an aptitude for video work.
Before her grandchildren were born, she lived for a time in Los Angeles.
“I was always very creative,” she said, “and my heart was set on working with film.”
When she first arrived in Los Angeles, she was hired by a temp agency to work for Disney.
“I had top skills, and they hired me. I knew I wanted to get into film. They said, ‘If you work with us for nine months, we can help you get to whatever department you want.’”
“Nine months came, and it never happened,” she said.
When she took custody of her young grandchildren, she realized that she would have to give up the pursuit of working in film and returned with the children to Kansas City, where they still live.
But now, digital advancements have made it possible to pick up where she left off.
She has self-published books via Kindle Direct Publishing, and now she is focused on the YouTube Douglasville series.
“I am now able to make my own animated stuff. I don’t need animators or a production company. I’m still in the early stages,” she said. “I can put a couple of scenes together and animate them. That is exciting. That’s where I am.”
“If I had had AI at that time,” she said of her early projects, “it would have accelerated a lot more.”
Catalogue
Marjorie’s works, as published via Amazon, include:
“The Garden Galaxy: Guardians of the Garden”;
“Sliding into Friendship”;
“Walt Disney’s KC Home”;
“Birth of Disney Animation”;
“The Baby Cake”;
“Poetry: Kansas City Chiefs”; and
“Hannibal History, Black Family.”
