Carnahan Announces Early Supreme Court Records Will Be Available Online March 04th 2011

From the SOS Office: Secretary of State Robin Carnahan announced that the Missouri State Archives has been awarded a $148,577 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to digitize a large portion of Missouri’s early judicial records. The funding will allow the Archives, a division of Carnahan’s office, to scan the Missouri Supreme Court’s original case files from 1821 to 1865 and make them available on the Missouri Digital Heritage website.

“We have worked with the Supreme Court of Missouri Historical Society for over a decade to make the records of Missouri’s highest court available,” Carnahan said. “We look forward to using the grant to make our state’s past even more accessible to Missourians.”

The funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission will make possible the digitization of more than 9,000 of the indexed case files, an estimated 864,000 pages of original Missouri history. The case files are from statehood through Missouri’s Border War and Civil War eras, providing a unique view on a variety of topics related to Missouri history, including immigration, slavery, westward expansion, Indian affairs, railroad and steamboat travel, and even dueling.

There are documents related to American statesman Thomas Hart Benton being sued for libel and the construction of gunboats during the Civil War by St. Louis industrialist James Eads. The names of well-known Missourians, such as President Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet member and postmaster general Montgomery Blair, governor and Confederate general Sterling Price, and Civil War provisional governor Hamilton Gamble, are intermingled with those of common citizens – providing a picture of Missouri life during the early 19th century that does not appear in any other records.

The digital images of these documents will be linked to the existing database so that they are readily available to researchers, teachers, students, and interested citizens from their classrooms and homes.

Since 1999, the Missouri State Archives and the Supreme Court of Missouri Historical Society have worked together to preserve the historical case files of the Missouri Supreme Court and create an annotated, online database to the records. A total of 12,000 criminal and civil cases from 1783 to 1889 have been indexed thus far, making a wealth of historical information available online to search for free.

For more information on the Supreme Court’s case files or to use the Missouri Supreme Court Historical Database, please visit http://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/judiciary/supremecourt/. The digitization work funded by the NHPRC will be available at this same website upon its completion in September 2012.