The special collections of the St. Louis Mercantile Library consist of over 400 individual collections with archival materials numbering in the millions, including over 100 historic newspaper titles, presidential letters, early travel diaries and civil war era letters, fur trade records and the newspaper and printing morgue of the St. Louis Globe Democrat, some of which is available digitally. The M-Series of collections represents the core of the Mercantile's holdings. Finding aids and descriptions can be accessed from the library's website through the Mercantile Special Collections Directory.
St. Louis Mercantile Library at the University of Missouri-St. Louis
This collection contains 31 hand-written letters bound in a single volume. The correspondence covers the years 1800-1820. Correspondents include Gen. James Wilkinson; Lieut. Zebulon M. Pike; Gov. William Henry Harrison; Henry Dearborn; William Clark; Frederick Bates; Gov. Meriwether Lewis; and Auguste Chouteau
Immediately after the Louisiana Territory was ceded by France to the United States, Gen. Daniel Bissell (1768-1833) was appointed Commandant of the U.S. Military Department of Missouri. He built, by government order, the contanment at Bellefontaine, just north of St. Louis. As Commandant, Bissell officially welcomed the expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to St. Louis. After his military career ended, Bissell retired to a large tract of land on the Bellefontaine Road near St. Louis.