Photo by Carmen Troesser
Every day, Missouri History Museum associate archivist Dennis Northcott navigates an alternate version of St. Louis that spans centuries and decades. It exists in spidery notes on index cards that are neatly filed in the drawers of the card catalog, and in diaries, letters, yearbooks, and real estate listings. It also exists in copies of Budcaster, Anheuser-Busch’s employee magazine. And sometimes it lives in two places at once.
Ten years ago, Northcott saved a spreadsheet to his desktop and began indexing the stuff that wasn’t in the catalog. “I thought, this is kind of ridiculous that we’re putting cards in this catalog in the internet age,” he says.
Eventually the project mushroomed into the Genealogy and Local History Index. When one of those sources of information pops up, he and his volunteers often spend a year or more translating it into searchable digital information. One volunteer entered every unique first and last name mentioned in MHM’s collection of Union Electric Magazine: approximately 40,000 first names and 40,000 last names.
“These employee magazines are just jam-packed,” Northcott says.
Soon after the Index went online, Northcott realized that it wasn’t just attracting people looking for ancestors. People were researching the history of a house. “So then, whatever source we were indexing, whenever that source had a St. Louis city or county address, we were typing that into the address field. Now, if you’re researching your home or address, you can go to the address search and find some of these magazines, which say so-and-so lived at this address,” he says. He shows the proof: a UE magazine bearing a two-page spread about the company’s Christmas lighting contest for emplyees, complete with names and home addresses.
Photo by Carmen Troesser
Photo by Carmen Troesser
As material is added, the Index becomes more useful. He’s currently adding information from the real estate sections of the Post-Dispatch and Globe-Democrat. When he’s browsing newspapers on microfilm and sees a home or a building, he keys in the address, the name of the buyer, and of the seller.
Northcott says one of the most coveted items is an old picture of a person’s house, but it’s often tough to find, which is why the employee magazines are so invaluable. But, he says, if you can find one, it can serve a purpose beyond the “Hey, that’s cool!” factor.
“Just recently, Richmond Heights was celebrating its centennial, so I was asked to give a talk,” he says. “One of the women who went searched our genealogy index for her address and found that one of the UE magazines had a picture of her home. She’d heard a story that there was a set of stone stairs leading to the back door, and she wanted to restore the house to the way that it had been—and sure enough, the photograph showed exactly that.”
Photo by Carmen Troesser
On August 26, Northcott leads one of his twice-yearly House History Workshops. Registration is required. Call 314-361-9017, or visit mohistory.org for more information.
