Unfortunately, Hannibal, has undergone the same homogenization of accents as
the rest of the nation.  There are many transplants here.  Quite a few are
refugees from the coasts, actually. But in the country in Marion, Ralls, and
Pike County among older folks who predate television, there are those who
possess a pronounced southern accent not unlike rural Kentucky and
Tennessee.  Of course, I cannot attest to what changes have occurred in this
accent over time since Sam left.
    It has been years since I took a linguistics course, and I don't have
the vocabulary to describe the nature of the sounds, but I will try. Words
sound as though they are pronounced slowly.  I'm not sure they really are,
but they sound that way.  As a transplanted minister friend of mine
observed, people say Jesus as if it has six syllables.  The vowels are drawn
out very long and the consonants are soft.  Ralls County sounds like Rawlz
Cowndee (the 'd' there is not quite right.  It is somewhere between a t and
a d.)  Roof is pronounced with an 'uh' not an 'oo' as in voodoo.  The second
person plural is "you-all" as God intended when he gave us the gift of
speech. One peculiarity that Vicki and I have noted is pronouncing elm as
'ell-em'.  Creeks are frequently branches.
    Many people, particularly those who live on the east coast, west coast
or are burdened with a graduate degree, associate the slow talk with slow
intellect which led to a Missouri Story about the WPA folklorist who came to
town.  He went up to an old farmer who was whittling on a bench in front of
the courthouse.  The folklorist (from Harvard, of course) pointed to a
nearby tree and asked, "Say, old timer, what do people around here call that
tree."
    The old man glanced up at the tree and went back to whittling. He
thought for a moment, then he replied, "I don't rightly recall the popular
name, but I'm pretty sure the scientific name is Quercus Velutina."
    Terrell