Missouri State Archives--St. Louis

WEB SITE:

http://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/

ADDRESS:

710 North Tucker, Room 213
St. Louis MO 63101

TELEPHONE:

314-588-1746

FAX:

314-588-9788

EMAIL:

Michael.Everman@sos.mo.gov
archrefstl@sos.mo.gov

CONTACT:

Michael Everman, Supervising Archivist

HOURS:

8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Monday through Friday

ACCESS AND USE:

Free and open to the public. Photocopying fees: 10 cents per page for paper, 50 cents for microfilm copies. For best service, please call or email with the particulars of your research request prior to your visit. Underground parking is available for a small fee, call or email for directions.

SPECIAL SERVICES AVAILABLE:

The building is wheelchair accessible. Archivists are available for presentations about research, preservation and historical resources. Microfilm reader/printer and a public use computer with printer are available for researchers.

GENERAL SCOPE AND CONTENTS:

The case files consist of civil, criminal and chancery actions filed in the St. Louis Circuit court, its predecessors and subsidiary courts. They possess exceptional evidential, informational, and intrinsic value, documenting the legal basis of the early court system, profiling local individuals of national prominence, and illustrating broad themes of American intellectual and social history. They are the “life” records of the populace that are often overlooked in favor of the more common birth, death, and marriage records when doing genealogical research. There is no other judicial collection of comparable value in the United Sates that documents the westward expansion and the crossroads of activity that defined St. Louis.

The bulk of the records document the case history of civil suits brought by ordinary men and women pursuing justice in disputes over debts, damages and broken promises and represents a cross-section of community rarely seen in other types of archival collections. Criminal cases dealing with theft, destruction of property, slander, and murder are also well represented. Chancery cases are less numerous, but deal with the equitable distribution of property such as in divorce and land partition cases.

Case files may include the following documents: promissory notes, assignment of notes and debts, petitions filed by attorneys, affidavits, summonses of witnesses required to support or refute the validity of the suit, writs, replications, depositions of witnesses, motions, wills, orders for sale, instructions to juries, jury verdicts and appeals.

All records were created in the course of business by the Circuit Court, its inferior courts, and predecessors as provided for by federal and state law. Upon the separation of St. Louis City and St. Louis County in 1875, the city retained custody of all court records previously produced. These records have remained in the custody of the St. Louis Circuit Court since that time, both in the historic Old Courthouse constructed in 1839-1852 and the Civil Courts Building constructed in 1930. The records are now housed at the Missouri State Archives-St. Louis. More information is available at the St. Louis Circuit Court Historical Records Project web site. An additional grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities was awarded to fund processing of Civil War related records .

MAJOR COLLECTIONS:

1. St. Louis Circuit Court Civil Case Files (and predecessor courts-1804-1815):
   • 1804-1835 —microfilmed and indexed on database; record books and indexes on microfilm for Civil and Criminal Case files
   • 1836-1860 —most unprocessed; record books and indexes on microfilm
   • 1861-1863 —processed; not yet indexed or microfilmed; record books and indexes on microfilm
   • 1864-1865 —unprocessed, not yet indexed or microfilmed; record books and indexes on microfilm
   • 1866-1868 —processed and indexed June 2008; record books and indexes not on microfilm
   • 1869-1875 -- unprocessed, not yet indexed or microfilmed
   • The St. Louis Circuit Court Historical Records Project digitized and made accessible on the project website more than 500 selected antebellum case files. These relate to Slave Freedom Suits, Lewis & Clark and the Corps of Discovery members, Fur Trade, and Native Americans. Additional thematic areas will be added as processing continues.
2. St. Louis Criminal Court, 1831-1875 — case files on microfilm, 1840-1875 (some gaps in sequences of records filmed); record books and index books for 1831-1875 on microfilm.
3. St. Louis Court of Common Pleas, 1841-1865 —case files unprocessed; record books and indexes on microfilm
4. St. Louis Land Court, 1853-1865 —case files unprocessed; record books and indexes on microfilm
5. St. Louis Court of Law Commissioners, 1851-1865 —(smaller claims similar to justice of peace)-- case files unprocessed; record books and indexes on microfilm
6. St. Louis Probate Court, 1804-1900 —case files microfilmed, digitized, & indexed online.
   • Case files 1900-1931 & 1959-1971 are stored and available for research; all other St. Louis City Probate records are accessible at the Probate Court file room in the Civil Courts building (Contact Gregory Ingram, Records Officer, 314-622-4919, gregory.ingram@courts.mo.gov )
7. Note : Our main collection is the case files and record books of the St. Louis Circuit Court, 1804-1875. We also have copies of most microfilm resources relating to St. Louis that are available at the Missouri State Archives in Jefferson City. This includes city and county office records but does not include census records and other basic genealogical resources readily available at the Missouri State Archives, the St. Louis City Public Library, or the St. Louis County Library Special Collections.

GUIDES:

The Missouri State Archives web site has listings of a variety of microfilm, paper, and online resources available for St. Louis City and St. Louis County as well as any other Missouri county records that have been microfilmed.

As a result of our recent project with major funding by the National Endowment for the Humanities, archivists preserved and made accessible more than 11,000 Circuit Court Case files from 1866-1868. NEH archivists developed thematic research guides dealing with transportation, gender, and the Civil War.

(5/2008)

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