Announcing Exciting New Additions to the StLGS Website: Part I

The St. Louis Genealogical Society's website, https://stlgs.org, reflects the society's ever-growing commitment to its mission of "collecting, preserving, and publishing genealogical and historical records." Almost all our volunteers work towards enhancing the website in myriad ways so that anyone with an interest in St. Louis can benefit from our efforts. During the past few months, we have been adding some exciting new online collections, and we are now ready to share them with you. The first will be of special interest to anyone whose roots go back to the earliest years of St. Louis and the Missouri Territory. Even if your ancestors are not represented in these lists, you may find the historical information and the familiar old St. Louis names to be fascinating. Here are the details.

The village of St. Louis became part of the Louisiana Territory when it was sold to the newly formed United States at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Called the Missouri Territory, the northern part of this new addition to the country suffered political growing pains right from the start. Our Missouri Territorial Papers collection consists of names and locations of the earliest residents of the eastern part of the Missouri Territory who signed various petitions to the government expressing both their satisfaction and dissatisfaction with local politicians.

This series of pages is currently open to everyone! We plan to keep the pages open for just 30 days, after which they will be accessible to StLGS members only, so if you are not currently a member of StLGS, you will want to check them out soon.

To access this new collection, go to the Research tab on our home page, then to "Community" and then to "History of St. Louis." 

On the right-hand side of the page that opens, you will find a link to the Missouri Territorial Papers. 

Or, you can go directly to the introductory page at https://stlgs.org/research-2/community/history-of-st-louis/missouri-territorial-papers.

There are four lists to explore: 

• The first list dates from 1805 and consists of men who supported then-governor James Wilkinson, although he was involved with the scandal surrounding Aaron Burr, which eventually led to his downfall. 
• A year later, after President Jefferson removed Wilkinson and replaced him, another petition included men who were asking for an alternative choice for governor.
• The third list, dated 1810, was a plea for the right to vote. Residents of New Orleans could elect their own local officials, but the federal government was still appointing officials in St. Louis.
• Also in 1810, the last petition is to the land commissioners decrying the tactics the federal government was using to keep deserving men from owning land in the eastern part of the territory.

Each page contains explanatory material and searchable lists of early residents. Here is a sample from the petition of 1805, also called the Wilkinson Memorial. We have alphabetized the lists and included the following information: 

• If a man could not sign his name, you will see an "X" in the "Mark" column.
• The "Signing Order" column reveals in which order the petition was signed.
• The eastern Missouri Territory was divided into sections, shown in the "Section" column.
• The territory was also divided into districts, and, if indicated in the original petition, we have included a location here.

Unfortunately, we have not been able to locate a map showing where these original sections were, so we can't tell you exactly where these men lived, based on the petitions. But there are plat maps and land records from that time period, so you may still be able to determine exactly where a person lived.

We hope you enjoy working with these early St. Louis records. We also hope that while you are visiting our website, you will discover how much more is available and either join or renew your membership. Stay tuned for another surprise coming next week! We know you will be excited about all these new additions to our website!