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One of the ways that museums build their collections is through partnerships with collectors whose area of interest overlaps in some way with the museum’s mission. One of the most important collectors, from our part of view, who aided our museum in its early years was a man named William K. Bixby. He was one of the preeminent manuscript collectors of his day, and he was particularly interested in Thomas Jefferson. So are we at the Missouri History Museum because of Thomas Jefferson’s role in the Louisiana Purchase, out of which grew the state of Missouri. So this is a Thomas Jefferson letter that William K. Bixby collected and later donated to our collection. You can see that he put a special rubber stamp on it that says “Jeffersoniana, Missouri Historical Society St. Louis, Bixby Collection.” And this is Thomas Jefferson’s signature from 1808. Another interest of William Bixby’s that overlaps more specifically to my area of collecting responsibility is Bixby’s interest in fine printing and rare books. This is an example that sort of marries those two interests. It’s called Martha Washington’s Letter. This is a book that William Bixby had printed privately at his own expense just because he was interested in it, and you can see that the cover is very lovely. It has this heavy paper with the grain visible, and there are these icons in the illustration that are reminiscent of perhaps wallpaper or textile with scenes that would have been relevant to Martha Washington’s era. Then if you open this up, he inscribed this particular copy to us. He would print these up and give them out to his friends and family and associates, evidently. This one says “Missouri Historical Society, compliments of W.K. Bixby.” So this is a very nice example of Bixby’s interests as a collector of manuscripts and of rare books. Here’s another example of a rare book that we got because of Bixby’s collecting interests. At first glance you would not think that this is a book that would be in scope for our collection. It’s a book of political philosophy in France from the 1760s. It’s got Bixby’s bookplate in it, so he collected it for his personal collection for some time, but you look at it closely on the title page and there’s a little signature in ink: “M. Jefferson, Paris 1789”. Thomas Jefferson and his daughter Martha lived in Paris in 1789 when they were there on a diplomatic mission for the young United States, and so someone has written in in pencil underneath, “Thomas Jefferson’s daughter.” So Bixby collected this work of French political philosophy primarily because it had once belonged to Thomas Jefferson’s daughter and was later handed down in her family. We have a signature of George W. Randolph; the Randolph’s and the Jefferson’s were connected. So this is a way that a very special and unique copy of a book that you might not think to look for here ended up being part of our collection.

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