A recent discovery behind a sealed door at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City sheds light on some of the now-closed prison’s former inmates.
The discovery was made by Missouri Convention and Visitors Bureau workers at the top of a previously unexplored staircase deep inside Housing Unit 1, according to the Missouri State Archives.
Mary Stansfield is their supervisory archivist.
"They were doing just a routine walk through of the penitentiary," she said. "There was a door that really hadn't been opened in anyone's memory and so they opened that door, went in, and there were just all of these records in a closed, disused room, part of the penitentiary."
There were drawers and boxes filled with administrative index cards for individual inmates, listing time served, violations and more, according to the state archives. Some have small mugshots attached, including a tiny set of cards for notorious inmates like James Earl Ray. Ray, from Ewing, Missouri, was imprisoned at the state penitentiary for armed robbery, and, after several unsuccessful escape attempts, he was able to get out in a box used to ship loaves of bread. Nearly a year later, he assassinated Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, TN. Stansfield said they realized other prisoners grouped together in a set of cards were ring leaders of the 1954 riot at the Missouri State Penitentiary.
The most exciting find though, Stansfield said, was 12 cellblock registers.
"I think it's a very significant find for genealogists, for people who are wanting to research their family's history, who are looking for information on an individual," she said, "because a lot of people will find information on their family that was in MSP and then go on the tour and so they want to know, 'OK. Great Grandpa was in the prison. What cell was he in?' So this will really help them out."
The registers, which are divided by race, cover the late 1930s through the early 1960s. Stansfield said they fill in a lot of gaps and double the amount of cellblock registers they had.
Besides the benefit for genealogists, she said, the find will help those doing research on the penitentiary or on prison history in the United States "kind of looking at what buildings were used, the distribution of inmates throughout the penitentiary, kind of the, you know, the racial segregation within the penitentiary of where — the physical racial segregation inside the penitentiary."
The cellblock registers are available for people to view in person at the Missouri State Archives. Stansfield said she is hopeful they’ll eventually be online for anyone to view.
The administrative index cards were shuffled, she said, and research is being done to put them in order.
The Missouri State Archives said it has received renewed interest in their volunteer program because of the recent find.
