• Letter from Secretary Carnahan

• State Archives

• Local Records

• Records Management

• Download the FY2006 Annual Report 

Records Services: FY2006 Annual Report

The Missouri State Archives houses the permanent records of Missouri state government and provides access to those records. The Local Records Preservation Program works with county and local government to organize and preserve their records. The State Records Management Program helps state agencies organize and manage their collections.

The three units work in concert to preserve state and local records of all types, including documents, books, maps, photographs, films, audio recordings, and movies .  The Archives serves as the focal point to make those records available to Missouri citizens and the wider research community.

Missouri State Archives

The Missouri State Archives is the official repository for permanent state records of enduring historical value. Most records flow into the State Archives through the Local Records Preservation Program and the State Records Management Program, both of which are described below.  The State Archives' mission is to foster an appreciation of Missouri history and illuminate contemporary public issues by preserving the state's permanent records and making them available to its citizens and their government.

Holdings & Research

The State Archives' vast collections and holdings, dating from 1770, allow professional historians and other researchers to uncover information that bring family histories to life and enlighten citizens to our collective past. The State Archives is Missouri's largest repository for historical documents. Its holdings include:

• more than 336 million pages of records of permanent value
• over 400,000 photographs (negatives, prints and slides)
• nearly 194,000 reels of microfilm and 270,000 microfiche
• some 9,000 maps
• tens of thousands of state publications
• a wide variety of audiovisual materials (audiotapes, CDs, movies, videos, etc.)

The State Archives preserves records that document Missouri's history from the era of French and Spanish colonial rule through the Louisiana Purchase and territorial period to the present day.  Among the holdings of the State Archives, researchers will find documentation of every aspect of life in Missouri. 

Records housed in the State Archives support the full range of research interests – from schoolchildren's studies to family history to academic research. They support research in topics and themes as diverse as: the part western Missouri towns played in westward expansion, including the Pony Express; St. Louis' role in the international fur trade; slavery; the Civil War; Frank and Jesse James; military records of Missourians from the War of 1812 to the start of World War II; European immigration; and Missouri politics. 

Among the larger records series at the State Archives are governors’ papers, general assembly records, Missouri Supreme Court case files, records and publications from state agencies and departments, and millions of microfilmed county and municipal records.

Many researchers continue to use traditional means to access the Archives.  They visit in person, raise questions via telephone, and place requests via mail.  In FY2006, the Archives assisted 24,930 researchers in the Alex M. Petrovic Reading Room, answered 7,495 telephone requests, responded to 7,935 e-mail requests, and fulfilled 9,831 research requests via postal mail.  Overall, this constituted a 25% increase in research requests over the previous year.

The Internet is emerging as the research medium of choice. In FY2006, patrons made 11.8 million Web requests for information.  This was nearly three times the number of Web requests received in the previous year.

Exhibits

The Missouri State Archives uses documents, photographs, and artifacts to create exhibits that allow patrons to experience Missouri's rich history. Exhibits from the Archives tour the state physically and are available over the Internet.  They encourage visitors to seek new perspectives and gain an understanding of Missouri's journey from the past to the present.

Between July 2005 and June 2006, 20,000 Missourians had the opportunity to view four Missouri State Archives exhibits at thirteen different venues across the state.  The most popular of these exhibits, Lewis and Clark across Missouri, has now traveled to more than 100 sites and has been seen by more than 125,000 people since its opening in 2003.

Two other Archives exhibits have proven so popular that new versions of each were unveiled during the past fiscal year.  Ticket to the Past, the First Twenty-Five Years of the Missouri State Fair first opened in 1992. The revised exhibit opened to the public in the Kirkpatrick State Information Center in March 2006 and began traveling in September 2006.  The Verdict of History: Examining Missouri’s Judicial Records debuted in 1998.  Selections from The Verdict of History were on display at the Missouri Supreme Court building throughout the year and became an important part of the Court’s annual tours for thousands of schoolchildren.  Web-based versions of these and other exhibits are available on the Archives website.

The Archives makes its exhibits available, free of charge, to museums, libraries, historical societies, and educational institutions throughout the state. Consult the Archives website for details.

To celebrate Black History Month in February 2006, the Missouri State Archives unveiled its first online collection: “Progress Amidst Prejudice: Portraits of African Americans in Missouri, 1880-1920.”  The collection is the result of a loan to the Archives by the Missouri State Museum of two photo albums, which included many portraits of African Americans.  Taken during the decades from Civil War Reconstruction to the end of World War I, this online collection features 129 images from urban and rural photography studios across Missouri.  To assist teachers in using the collection in the classroom, Archives staff created a supplemental lesson plan, geared to students from grades eight through twelve.  The African American Portrait Collection is now online at the Archives website, along with several other resources in the African American History Initiative.

The Archives is working to make more of its visual collections available online.  A project currently underway will make the Charles Elliott Gill Glass Plate Negative Collection available electronically.   Ongoing digitization efforts will target the Archives' most-used collections in order to provide more access to the photograph collections.

Programming

In FY06, the Archives presented twelve programs, free to the public, as part of its Thursday Evening Speakers Series. Among the most popular programs of the year were:

• The Union on Trial:  The Political Journals of William Barclay Napton, 1829-1883, a program based on the journals of this Missouri editor, lawyer, and state Supreme Court Justice, led by historian and author Christopher Phillips;
• A Frontier History in Song, presented by the Columbia Shape Note Singers;and
• The Houses that Sears Built, a presentation about the “kit” homes sold through Sears, Roebuck, and Company between 1908 and 1940, by Rosemary Thornton.

In addition, the popular Family History Day program was presented by Archives’ staff to introduce the public to basic genealogy research and increase access to Archives’ databases. Some 914 people attended these programs.

In spring 2006, 4,173 Missouri elementary school students (representing both private and public schools) from all corners of the state attended performance days of Archives Alive! at the Missouri State Archives. These students were entertained and educated through a performance of “The Molly and Delores Show,” which introduced them to early Missouri history concepts and a wide array of famous Missourians. Each performance ended with a question-and-answer period for students and teachers alike.

Visiting schools, many of which also scheduled time to meet with their legislators at the Capitol and to visit the Governor's Mansion, were offered a comprehensive tour of the Missouri State Archives and a chance to see some original documents and facsimiles of documents relating to famous Missourians.

Projects

The Archives has moved aggressively to provide wider and easier access to the state's historical records. Thus, the Archives has focused recently on developing better indexes and online access to original documents.  A principal objective during FY06 has been increasing the viability of the Internet as a key tool for access. It is a sign of success that citizens conducted over 11.8 million Internet searches on the Archives website during FY2006.

While the Archives continues to work on many noteworthy projects in-house, it also continues to work with partners to launch and develop other ambitious projects. All these projects use technology to approach the task of researching voluminous record groups and to develop a new understanding of the history we share as a state. Missouri State Archives continues to keep the adage “Many hands make light work” in mind as it continues to carry out its mission of making historical records available. Most of the Archives' projects unite its historical resources and expertise with the resources and labor of outside institutions and organizations, allowing new scholarship and public programming opportunities.

• Death record certificates (previously held at the Department of Health and Senior Services) more than 50 years old were transferred to the Archives by an act of the Missouri legislature. In April 2006, the Archives mounted a death certificate database containing over two million individual death certificates from 1910-1955.  Over 600 volunteers and students from around the nation and other countries logged over 27,000 hours to create the database.  These certificates are searchable by name, county, or month and year. Simultaneously, Archives staff began digitizing the original death certificates; by the end of the fiscal year, work was complete on the certificates from 1910 through 1929.  The death certificates are scanned in the Imaging Services unit, and the images are copied onto microfilm; the project generated 135 rolls of preservation microfilm. When complete, there will be a comprehensive database with links to digital images of all the certificates.

• This year marked the eighth anniversary of the Archives' partnership with the Supreme Court of Missouri Historical Society to sponsor two internships and the Robert Eldridge Seiler Fellowship at the Archives.  Each year the interns work on the long-term project to develop an annotated, searchable, online database for Missouri’s Supreme Court case files. The FY2006 interns added cases from the immediate post-Civil War period to the database, bringing the total to 9,140 case files that are now fully processed and indexed. The database is available at the Archives website.

Two candidates – Colin Gordon and Eric Gardner – were awarded the Seiler Fellowship.  Gordon, a professor of history at the University of Iowa, used judicial records to study urban decay in twentieth-century St. Louis.  Gardner, an English professor at Saginaw State University, conducted research on a multi-year book project on the rhetoric used in legal arguments on slavery and freedom; he began by studying the cases of Francis Murdoch, the attorney who filed Dred Scott’s petition for freedom.

• On October 13, Secretary Carnahan unveiled the St. Charles Circuit Court Records Project, which will preserve and make accessible the court's earliest records.  This project complements similar ones in the early districts of Cape Girardeau, New Madrid, and St. Louis, and promises to helprewrite the origins and shaping of Missouri.  The documents, which date from 1806, will provide historians and genealogists with new insights into the life and times of such American legends as Daniel Boone and William Clark.  Additional cases involve St. Louis founder Auguste Chouteau, the state’s first governor Alexander McNair, Senator Thomas Hart Benton, and other important players in Missouri’s early history.  Among the files are the petitions to incorporate St. Charles and Portage Des Sioux as well as petitions for roads to the Boonslick region.  Other cases provide details on early trade with Santa Fe, the War of 1812, and the fur trade. 


Secretary Carnahan officially opened
the Missouri State Archives-St. Louis.

• The Missouri State Archives–St. Louis was dedicated in June 2006.  This is the first branch of the State Archives located outside Jefferson City.  It houses the St. Louis Circuit Court Historical Records Project, in which19th-century records are being preserved and made available for research.  The St. Louis branch was officially opened in a celebration that included Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, St. Louis Circuit Court Clerk Mariano Favazza, Congressman William Lacy Clay, Representative Kathlyn Fares (who sponsored the bill creating the branch), and other local officials.  Photographs from the dedication ceremony are available here.  The MSA-St. Louis Archives branch is located in the old Globe-Democrat building in downtown St. Louis.  At the opening, an annotated guide to all 80,000 records processed by the Archives staff (from 1804-1830) was made available for the first time, marking completion of the first phase of this project.

The St. Louis Circuit Court Project is a partnership between the Archives, St. Louis Circuit Court, and a consortium of St. Louis colleges and universities.  This partnership is dedicated to preserving and making available those records from the court’s inception in 1804 to 1875, a date that roughly marks the end of the Civil War Reconstruction and coincides with the adoption of the 1875 Missouri constitution, which made St. Louis an independent city.

The project's Academic Advisory Council (comprised of professors and administrators from nine Missouri institutions) selects themes of particular significance to regional, state, and national history that the St. Louis Circuit Court records can highlight through scholarly research and educational programs. With that guidance, case files of especially high interest are digitized and placed online.  The thematic series available online include 300 slave freedom suits, seventy cases on fur trade, and thirty-two cases on Native Americans.  The indexes and digital images are available at the project website.

• In April 2006, the Archives received a Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Legacy Award for the online series involving the members of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery.  These files from 1809-1839 consist of 98 court actions in which Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, or other members of the Corps played a prominent role.  All are now available on the Web.

State Document Preservation Fund

The State Documents Preservation Fund was created in 1996 by the 88th General Assembly through Senate Bill 670. The fund supports the preservation of and access to documents of historical value by permitting the State Archives to obtain additional funds from private and corporate sources. At the close of FY06, the fund balance was $7,109.80.

Missouri Historical Records Advisory Board

The Missouri Historical Records Advisory Board (MHRAB) is the central advisory body for historical records planning and for projects relating to historic records that are developed and carried out within the state. The MHRAB provides state-level appraisal of grant proposals submitted to the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) by Missouri repositories and serves as the review and award panel for grant applications submitted to the Missouri State Archives Local Records Grant Program.

During the year, the MHRAB evaluated Missouri grant proposals submitted to the NHPRC.  The MHRAB also reviewed sixty-four proposals submitted to the Local Records Grant Program.  Of these, forty-four grants, for a total of $355,674, were awarded to local government agencies for approved records management or preservation projects.  In addition, the board revised the guidelines of the Local Records Grant Program to expand funding for judicial records projects.

The MHRAB developed and posted a Web-based communication system for professionals connected with Missouri repositories.  This listserv, Docline, will improve communication within Missouri’s historical records community, thereby encouraging cooperative strategies and expanding the knowledge base of records professionals.  To register for Docline and review postings, visit http://listserv.sos.mo.gov/listserv/archives/docline.html.

The Governor, with the advice and consent of the Senate, appoints members to the MHRAB. As the Board's coordinator, the Secretary of State handles its administrative responsibilities. Federal regulations require members to have experience and interest in the collection, administration and use of historical records, and a dedication to the preservation of and access to Missouri's documented heritage.

Members of the Missouri Historical Records Advisory Board - FY06

Robin Carnahan Secretary of State Coordinator	Kenneth H. Winn, Missouri State Archivist Deputy Coordinator
Joseph L. Adams Mayor University City	Gary R. Kremer Executive Director State Historical Society of Missouri Columbia
Gracia Backer New Bloomfield	Robert P. Neumann Director Greene County Archives Springfield
Marcia Bennett Executive Director St. Joseph Convention & Visitors Bureau	David Richards, Head Special Collections and Archives Department, Meyer Library Missouri State University Springfield
Raymond Doswell Director Negro Leagues Baseball Museum Kansas City	Anne G. Rottmann Head Librarian, State Capitol Legislative Library Jefferson City
Steven P. Gietschier Senior Managing Editor, Research The Sporting News St. Louis	Jeannette A. Zinkgraf Records Manager St. Louis County Government Records Center Overland
Christopher Gordon Archivist Missouri Historical Society St. Louis	Dr. Benedict K. Zobrist Director Emeritus Harry S Truman Library and Museum Independence