St. Louis Recorded Archives Transcription Project, 1938-1940
Finding Aid by Lillian Ruth Frick and Jeanne Schatz
March 1989
Revised July 1993
INTRODUCTION TO THE COLLECTION
The French and Spanish official recordings of colonial St. Louis contain a wealth of research material from 1764 to 1804. The records are mainly deeds, wills, marriage contracts, inventories, constable's sales, mortgages, powers of attorney, and miscellaneous "instruments" (documents) written in French and Spanish. Because the spelling of names was somewhat erratic at the time, the names taken from the instruments may have slightly different spellings than what is now considered the proper spelling. Researchers of African-American history may wish to note the name Berry Mitchum, which is probably a phonetic spelling of John Berry Meachum, a famous St. Louis cooper and clergyman.
The National Park Service, with the cooperation of the St. Louis Recorder's Office, sponsored Works Progress Administration (WPA) projects numbers 6869 and 8364 to translate and transcribe these colonial archives of St. Louis. The transcriptions were then indexed by proper name and by subject matter. The indexing project began on October 11, 1938 under the supervision of Herbert L. Moscowitz. It took the staff of well qualified research workers 17,810 hours to complete the transcriptions and indexes of the 2503 "instruments" housed in the archives of the Office of the Recorder. The transcriptions were made in pencil on 5x8 inch ruled tablet sheets, and then typewritten on 5x8 inch white index cards. All proper names were underlined with red ink. The cards were arranged by volume, book, and page number.
The extant original documents are housed in the Missouri Historical Society (225 S. Skinker, St. Louis, Missouri 63105, (314) 746-4500). They are arranged by instrument numbers assigned by the Society staff. This collection is accessible through two name index card files.
The City Recorder's Office (1200 Market St., Room 126, St. Louis, Missouri 63103, (314) 622-4610) has two sets of colonial archives documents for the period 1793-1804. The first was created in 1859 by Edward Berry and is made up of documents in French or Spanish, each followed immediately by Berry's English translation of the document. Berry also indicated the page numbers from the original volumes. Rebound in the 1960s, this set is somewhat out of order and a few documents are missing. The second set is less complete. The first two volumes have been made to look like originals. These have the instrument numbers assigned by the Missouri Historical Society and may have been created as late as 1912. The other four volumes are copies of Edward Berry's work, without the English translations. These records are accessible to the public if the names and dates involved are known.
Series 4-6 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 recorded on similar cards, and were listed with the WPA records in a 1982 report. Therefore, they have been included as part of this collection.
Information obtained from this collection must be properly cited, whether used in publication or in other formats. The proper citation for this collection is:
National Park Service
Gateway Arch National Park
St. Louis Recorded Archives Transcription Project
Box__, Folder__
Researchers are advised that before records, photographs, or any other unpublished materials from this collection can be published or exhibited, permission from the National Park Service must be obtained in writing.
