St. Louis Circuit Court Historical Records Project

Tips for Searching this Site

There are three ways to find case files on this site: free text search, faceted browsing, and advanced search. Each works a little differently, so use whichever fits what you’re looking for.

Free Text Search

The search box at the top of the site searches across all item text at once — titles, transcriptions, and metadata fields.

• Click the magnifying glass icon in the upper right of the page to open the search box.
• Type a single word as-is, or put a multi-word phrase or full name (like “Dred Scott”) in quotation marks, and press Enter.
• Results include any item where your search term appears anywhere in its record.
• This is the fastest way to search if you don’t know which specific field your term might appear in.
• Free text search does not support field-specific searches (e.g., “search only titles”) — for that, use Advanced Search below.

Important: put multi-word searches in quotation marks — especially names. Without quotes, the search treats each word separately rather than as a single phrase.

• Searching for a person’s full name? Put it in quotes: "Dred Scott" — this searches for the phrase as a unit.
• Without quotes, searching Dred Scott will return items that mention “Dred” or “Scott” separately, rather than only items about Dred Scott specifically.
• The same applies to any multi-word phrase you want treated as a single unit (case names, causes of action, etc.).

Important: try a name both ways. Metadata fields (like Plaintiff or Defendant) typically list names last-name-first, while transcriptions record names as they appear in the original document — usually first-name-first. To make sure you find everything, search the name both ways:

• "Scott, Dred" (last name first, as it usually appears in metadata)
• "Dred Scott" (first name first, as it usually appears in transcriptions)

Note: Search is not case-sensitive, even inside quotation marks. Searching "circuit court" and "Circuit Court" will return the same results, so you don’t need to match the capitalization used in the record.

Faceted Browsing

Faceted browsing lets you narrow down a list of items step by step using filters shown in the sidebar, rather than typing a search query.

• The Browse All Records link in the top navigation opens a faceted browse of all primary sources on the site (not limited to one collection), sorted by date, with facets like Record type and Case series.
• Under the Historical Records Project menu is a page for each record type (cases, bonds, record books, etc.). On those pages, you’ll see a button like “Browse All Cases” or “Browse All Bonds” that takes you to a faceted browse for that collection of materials.
• Use the filters in the sidebar to narrow results by:
  • Plaintiff name
  • Defendant name
  • Attorneys for the plaintiff or for the defendant
  • and more.
• You can also narrow by Series to focus on a specific group of related case files.
• Selecting a facet value narrows the current results to only items matching that value.
• You can combine multiple facets to narrow further (e.g., a specific plaintiff and a specific judge).
• Results are displayed in a table, sorted by date from oldest to newest.
• Saving or sharing a search: use the Copy Permalink button to get a link to your current faceted search. Unlike the address bar, this link captures the full set of filters you've applied — even though the filters aren't shown in the URL itself. Save this link or share it with someone else to return to (or hand off) the exact same filtered results later.

Tip: Faceted browsing is best when you want to explore a known set of items (like a single case file or collection) rather than search the whole site. It’s especially useful here if you’re trying to find all case files connected to a specific plaintiff, defendant, attorney, next friend, judge, or cause of action — or narrowed down to a particular Series. Once you've got the results you want, use Copy Permalink to save or share that exact search.

Advanced Search

Advanced search lets you search specific metadata fields directly, rather than searching all text at once.

• Go to the Advanced Search form (usually linked near the main search box).
• Choose a property (metadata field) to search — for example, Title, Date, or Identifier.
• Which fields can I search? Advanced Search isn't limited to the facet fields above — you can search by any metadata field in use on the site (Plaintiff, Judge, Next Friend, and many others). To see the full list of custom field names defined for this project, check the ontology at https://digitalexhibits.library.washu.edu/ns/ccr# — though note this only lists the custom fields created for this project, not the standard fields (like Dublin Core) that are also in use on items.
• Choose a search type, such as:
  • is exactly — matches the field’s value exactly
  • contains — matches if your term appears anywhere in the field
  • is empty / is not empty — finds items missing or having data in that field
• Enter your search term(s).
• To add more search terms: click the plus sign (+) to add another property search row. Each row you add lets you search a different (or the same) field with its own term.
  • For example, you could add one row for Plaintiff contains “Scott” and a second row for Date is exactly “1846”.
  • Click the matching minus sign (–) next to a row to remove it if you added one by mistake.
• Choose AND or OR: there’s a toggle that controls how your rows are combined:
  • AND — an item must match all of your rows to appear in the results (narrows your results).
  • OR — an item can match any one of your rows to appear in the results (broadens your results).
  • Make sure the toggle is set the way you intend — it’s easy to get fewer (or more) results than expected if it’s on the wrong setting.

Tip: Use Advanced Search when you know which field your information should appear in (for example, searching only within Identifier values), or when a free text search returns too many unrelated results. Use the plus sign to search multiple fields at once, and set the AND/OR toggle depending on whether you want results matching all your criteria or any of them.

Which Should I Use?