The collection relates to the Caleb Cox family of New Orleans and Fredericktown, Missouri. It contains primarily correspondence (originals and photostats) among family members, a journal belonging to Caleb Cox before his marriage, and family information. Items date from 1818 to 1940 with several date gaps, most notably 1821 to 1823, 1825 to 1847, 1855 to 1857, 1865 to 1869, 1881 to 1909, and 1914 to 1939. The collection is arranged chronologically. The earliest item in the collection is Caleb Cox’s journal, dating from November 1818 to February 1820. At an unknown date, notes were added to the journal, either penciled in the margins or with slips of paper to clarify events or people. The added notes reveal that early entries relate to a broken engagement to a woman in Virginia. Caleb’s entries are often cryptic and personal in nature with few names, often only initials. Sometimes the entries read like a letter, as though he addressed his thoughts to one person. He also spent much time ruminating on the state of his own happiness, despairing of love, religion (he was Catholic), and his financial future. On August 16, 1819, Caleb left New Orleans on the steamboat Alabama to journey up the Mississippi River to St. Louis with a load of merchandise. He didn’t arrive in St. Louis until November 10th. Along the way, Caleb chronicled the difficulties encountered by the Alabama. Low water levels on the river impeded progress, and several passengers and crew members succumbed to illness. Replacement crew had to be found at various stops. On October 25th, a lighter, a flat-bottom barge, was hired and used to reduce the weight of the steamboat so that it might proceed in the shallow water. Caleb hired a keelboat and left, hoping to reach St. Louis sooner than if he remained on the Alabama. Upon arrival in St. Louis, Caleb met with “Mr. O” and found two letters from Louisa Heins waiting for him at the post office. After he rented a store and described St. Louis, the melancholy apparent in the previous part of the journal returned. He lamented the lack of letters from Louisa and the cold weather, which delayed his return to New Orleans to marry. On February 15th, Caleb left St. Louis in a keelboat, met a steamboat, and in the last journal entry, dated February 24th, he wrote that he expected to arrive in New Orleans the next day. A section entitled “Communications of Ms L. H” appears toward the end of the volume. There is also a typescript of this portion of the journal and a note that dates it from February 1819. Three pages of Heins and Test family information accompany the typescript (f.2). This appears to have been part of a letter from Louisa Heins that Caleb copied into his journal, adding his own remarks to portions of her family’s story. Louisa told the story of her childhood and young adult life. Her father had been wealthy but had lost his fortune, placing his family in dire straits. Illness struck their family, and both her father and her younger sister died. A friend and an uncle helped Louisa’s widowed mother and children. Louisa explained how she came to live in New Orleans, away from the rest of her family. Of note, Louisa explained the innocent accident which led to the loss of her left eye. The correspondence was written by several members of the Caleb Cox family circa 1818 to 1870. Seven letters are photostat copies; the location of the originals is unknown. Two letters, dated 1824 and 1870, do not include immediate members of the Caleb Cox family, and a connection to the Cox family is unclear. In the 1870 letter, Sue M. Riley, wife of the postmaster at Horine Station (Jefferson County), wrote to Mrs. Zenon Brown for assistance in procuring tradesmen and explained plans for the town. Most of the earliest letters from 1818 to 1820 were written to Louisa Heins by Caleb Cox, who also included some poetry. The earliest letters were written to Louisa before the couple married in March 1820. The last three letters were written by Ann and Ellen Cox, Caleb’s sisters-in-law, to Louisa after the couple returned to St. Louis upon their marriage. Louisa Cox wrote many of the later letters to her children as they made their own lives and moved from Fredericktown. In her letters, she made book recommendations and shared news of family, neighbors, and friends. In Louisa’s last letter in January 1861, she discussed politics, revealing her pro-Union sentiments and that she was “alarmed at the present agitated state of our beloved country” (f.7). However, the slaveholding family ultimately came down on the side of the Confederacy and lost George Washington Cox in 1863, while he was serving with the Confederate Army. Louisa also discussed enslaved people owned by the Cox family, mentioning "Black Mary" several times. Her son Joshua Barton spent some time in Texas before he returned to Missouri, eventually settling in Perryville. In 1858, he sent two letters to his brother-in-law, Francis Pratte, describing Texas and his plans and asking him to consider moving from Missouri. In letters from April to June 1858, Louisa sent some of her slaves to Barton and told of a man named Wilson, whose disruption of the household led her to hire him out to a man in New Madrid whom she hoped would buy him. She reported some unrest with the slaves in Fredericktown in September 1859; nine men had runaway. Amelia Cox Shaw was the recipient of many letters, the first of which was a love letter from Philip A. Shaw on April 1, 1848. He headed the letter “Golden Palace, Star Venus” and signed it “Starlight.” In 1848, Philip was thirty-one and Amelia was seventeen; the couple married in September 1848. Amelia’s family lived in New Orleans until the Civil War when Union forces took control of the city, and her family was ordered to leave. The Shaws came to St. Francois County, Missouri, where they remained after the war. Friends wrote four letters to Amelia from New Orleans in 1863 and 1864, sharing news of friends and acquaintances, some of whom had been incarcerated, including a priest who refused to sign a loyalty oath (f.8). One unidentified friend was a teacher and explained how the schools were scrutinized. She told Amelia about going to the levee where boats arrived that had endured enemy fire. On another occasion, she described how a rainstorm disrupted the shipboard examination of baggage owned by citizens who were being forced to leave, some of whom had been rounded up by guards. The only letter written by Henry A. Cox was received by Louisa Cox during his journey to California during the gold rush on June 15, 1849 (photostat). He wrote from Fort Laramie and highlighted sights seen, an impromptu buffalo hunt, and crossing the Platte River. Henry reported that the party had no accidents and little sickness. He asked his mother to direct his mail and Missouri newspapers to his final destination. A folder containing various notes of family information is filed at the end of the collection. The two earliest pages include birth, death, and marriage notes for the Caleb Cox family written on ledger paper with the last entries dated 1860 and 1895. For the Barton Cox family, there is a handwritten copy of the obituary for Barton’s ten-year-old son and a note stating that Barton’s step-daughter Julia died at age nineteen. There are pages relating to requests for the war records of Moses Cox, Caleb Cox, and William Henry Harrison “Harry” Cox dated from 1910 to 1914. In 1940, Ida Schaaf wrote a letter to Stella Drumm, which accompanied the donation of Caleb Cox’s journal and included family history.