This article previously appeared in The St. Louis Genealogical Quarterly, 2019.
One of the little known repositories for genealogical research in the St. Louis metropolitan Area is Gateway Arch National Park’s library and archives. This collection focuses mostly on the development and creation of the national park and the building of the Gateway Arch. While this tight focus doesn’t seem the obvious choice for genealogical research, many families in St. Louis have a family history that in some way touches the development of the park, the creation of the monument or the land that the park currently occupies and may find records of interest in this collection. One of the most intriguing collections in the archives is the St. Louis Recorded Archives Transcription Project.
The official records of colonial St. Louis kept by French and Spanish officials contain a wealth of research material from 1764 to 1804. One of the real treasures from the early days of the city, they record a variety of legal transactions of the city’s early inhabitants. These documents include deeds, wills, marriage contracts, inventories, mortgages, sales of property and sales of enslaved persons. These legal instruments were recorded in either French or Spanish with a very few later documents in English. This set of documents has a complicated history that encompasses a variety of formats and three repositories, which includes a complicated layer of secondary materials to assist with the use of the primary documents.
In 1876, Oscar W. Collet, an early employee of the Missouri Historical Society, created an index to these early archives from the Recorder of Deeds Office regarding property transactions. This index is available in both the St. Louis Public Library’s Central Library, the St. Louis County Library Headquarters and at the Missouri Historical Society Library and Research Center. In 1938, the National Park Service and the St. Louis Recorder of Deeds Office sponsored Works Progress Administration projects to translate and transcribe portions of these colonial archives of St. Louis. The transcriptions were indexed by proper name and by subject matter. A man named Herbert L. Moscowitz supervised a staff of researchers that transcribed 2503 legal instruments over the course of 17,810 hours. The staff transcribed the documents onto 5x8 index cards and underlined the proper names in red for ease of use. The cards are arranged by the volume, book and page number of the instruments as they were stored at the Recorder of Deeds Office. This set of cards is located at the Gateway Arch National Park Archives.[i]
The extant original documents are housed in the Missouri Historical Society Library and Research Center under the collection name The St. Louis Archives, 1766-1804, A1376. These thirty eight boxes of records are arranged by instrument number. A different set of approximately 9,500 WPA cards indexing this collection in alphabetical order by name are also available there as the Early St. Louis Archives Card Index.[ii]
In addition to the original documents, there is a set of handwritten copies and translations created sometime in the mid-1800s in bound volumes in the Recorder of Deeds Archives in St. Louis City Hall. To use this collection of documents, known as the Colonial Records Collection, you will need the name of the grantor or the grantee of the property in order to find the appropriate document. One set has translations into English and the other does not. In 1962, these document copies of the French and Spanish archives were microfilmed by the City of St. Louis. This set of microfilm is available at St. Louis County Library Headquarters, the State Historical Society of Missouri in Columbia and at the Recorder of Deeds Archives. A paper copy of this microfilmed set of records is available at the Missouri Historical Society Library and Research Center.[iii]
The collection at Gateway Arch National Park consists of the 5x8 index cards of the translations and the indexes created by the WPA, including both name and subject and various associated items. The first series of this collection consists of the translations arranged by the volume and number assigned to the instrument by the Recorder of Deeds office and dates from 1764-1804. This series contains 3,634 cards.
The proper name index forms series two containing a card for each name mentioned in the translated records. Variations of spellings for many of the names are recorded as “see also” references. Each card lists the volume, book, page number and instrument number corresponding to that name. This series contains 8,383 cards.
The next series in the collection consists of a subject index to the transcriptions. Arranged alphabetically by subject it consists of approximately 75 pages of letter size sheets. The subjects include: buildings, donations, guardianships, inventories, leases, marriage contracts, mortgages, powers of attorney, receipts, sales of land, sales labeled miscellaneous by the WPA workers but almost entirely composed of the sales of enslaved persons, and wills.The next few series are believed to be part of a WPA project as well, however there is no documentation of this. These records were found in conjunction with the Recorded Archives records, are transcribed on similar cards, and were listed with the WPA records in a 1982 report. Therefore, they are considered to be part of this collection.
Series four contains information about mills. The cards include the names of owners of mills, the county where the mill was located and a short history of each mill. These are arranged alphabetically by county and cover a period from 1784-1855.
The next series is entitled “block owners” and records the property owners from 1804-1811 of various lots. This is a short series of fifteen cards.
The last series is called “Taxpayers” and contains two sets of cards with information dating from 1836 on St. Louis taxpayers and their real estate. The first set of cards is arranged by block number and lists the property owners on each block with a description of their property. The information on the second set of cards is described on the cards as taken from an original volume in the possession of Henry Chouteau. This series presents something of a mystery. Henry Chouteau was the clerk of the St. Louis Circuit Court in 1836, but these cards are clearly of the same age as the previous WPA work so they must have been created from some unknown intermediary document. The cards are arranged alphabetically by property owner’s name and include block number, street, dimensions of the lot, assessed valuation, and boundary streets.
A third, seemingly completely unrelated series of unknown origin consists of a set of cards with membership information for the St. Louis Architectural Club from 1910-1915. Each card contains a potential member’s name, address, and referring members for each individual.
The finding aid for this collection is available or contact the archivist at Jennifer_clark@partner.nps.gov to request an electronic or paper copy. The collection is available for study by appointment at the archives of Gateway Arch National Park. Many of the cards have been scanned and can be shared via email.
These early records were clearly of great value to many generations of scholars who created this complicated web of indexing and documentation. Hopefully, these secondary sources can still be of use to modern researchers investigating the transactions and histories of St. Louis’ early inhabitants.
[i] Frick, Lillian Ruth and Jeanne Schatz. “Finding Aid to St. Louis Recorded Archives Transcription Project, Transcriptions & Indexes, 1938-1940.” St. Louis, Missouri. Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, 1989, revised 1993.
[ii] Missouri Historical Society. “Archives Card Catalog | Missouri Historical Society.” mohistory.org/research/genealogy-family-history/archives-card-catalog/ (retrieved 25 February 2019). AndMissouri Historical Society. “Guide to the Archival Collections at Missouri History Museum.” https://images.mohistory.org/legacy/mohistory/archives_guides/Guide_to_the_Archival_Collections_A-Z.pdf. Published July 2011. (retrieved 25 February 2019).
[iii] Samoyoa, Marianne. “Finding Aids to the St. Louis French and Spanish Archives, 1766-1804.” 2004.