New database reveals details of state's earliest court cases.

Famed explorer Meriwether Lewis died with outstanding debts. Missouri's first senator and famed painter Thomas Hart Benton was sued for libel. And scores of other lesser-known Missourians were embroil in land disputes divorces, and other court cases. Legal details about the sordid lives of famous "and not-so-famous Missourians are now available online.

About 7,000 legal cases heard by Missouri's highest court from 1783 to 1871 are available on the Missouri secretory of state's Web site, www.sos.mo.gov/archives/judiciary/supremecourt. The site allows academics, family historians, and the curious to trace court cases by searching for a person's name, the year a case occurred, and the general subject. The search provides a brief summary and directs searchers to the exact location where the actual court papers, containing the rest of the details, are kept at the Missouri State Archives in Jefferson City.

Some cases are in French or Spanish because the database indudes court cases from the days before Missouri became a state in 1821. The eaeliest document lists dates to 1783 and involves a prominent Cape Girardeau resident Loius Lorimier and a man named Isaac William. It is entitled "writ of cepi corpus (I have taken the body)." (To find out more, you will have to travel to the State Archives to view the entire file.)

State Archivist Ken Winn says the office already handles 50,000 research requests annually and hopes the database will encourage people to visit the archives to find out more.

The Internet database contains a complete listing of all cases before 1851 and a partial listing of cases up to 1871. Work is continuing to expand the database. Eventually, the State Archives would like to include every Supreme Court case ever filed, but there is no target date for that goal because of the cost of cataloging the expansive modern-day court cases.