High in the Civil Courts building in downtown St. Louis, Kathy Grillo’s solitary desk marks off her corner work space among row after row of cabinets and boxes filled with old records tracing people and events in the gateway city. Kathy’s title is Records Manager of the 22nd Judicial Circuit of Missouri, and she is a national treasure. We were directed to her during a couple hours we had between things at the AEJMC conference in St. Louis.

After lunch, Nancy and I walked around downtown a little, admiring the architecture, making mental notes of restaurant locations, and generally reveling in some precious down time together. Working on an imperfect recall of an earlier conversation with Roxanne about a famous trial that took place in St. Louis, we had begun asking sheriff’s deputies, bailiffs, and clerks where the Scopes trial was held, and where the tours were. That’s how we met Kathy.

At first, court officers, staff, and clerks responded as thought they thought we were asking about a trial in progress. And as we explained that we were asking about the famous trial on evolution, back in the twenties, with Clarence Darrow, they gave us blank stares. It was unsettling. “How could they not know about the Scopes Trial,” we asked each other. Finally, one of the clerks we had talked to earlier came over to the desk and said, “y’all take that elevator over there up to the second floor and ask for Kathy.”

Tucked back around the corner in a hallway at the west end of the building was a tiny old elevator. On the second floor it emptied out into a reception area with another long desk behind which were a couple of women. “Kathy?” I asked.

“No.”

“Is Kathy here?” I continued.

“Kathy Grillo?”

“I don’t know. Downstairs they said we should come up here and ask for Kathy.” Then we explained what we were looking for.

They didn’t know about the Scopes trial either, but the second woman nodded, and said, “Just have a seat, and Kathy will be here in a minute.”

In about five minutes, a dark-haired woman, about forty, wearing dark pants and a light shirt came from the general direction of the elevator. We asked her about the Scopes trial. “A Tennessee case,” she said. “You mean the one with Clarence Darrow?” she asked.

Thus began a delightful hour-long conversation during which she took us up into the archives where she works, discussed her work, gave us a facsimile copy of Dred Scott’s petition (this was probably the famous St. Louis case Roxanne was talking about) to be heard in court. Kathy told us they were into a two-year long project digitizing old records under her charge. She showed us huge court journals from the 19th century, where the ink is fading.

She revealed they have a collection of court documents classified as “freedom” documents. She said they recently digitized a lot of Lewis and Clark documents. It seems the famous explorers gathered a lot of outfitting from St. Louis merchants promising “the government will pay for it.” Apparently the government did not.

We exchanged, business cards, Kathy and I. She asked if we needed anything else, and made it clear we had only to ask. It was a nice, unexpected discovery in the middle of the annual AEJMC conference.