The Peterson Collection has so many documents that I knew before going in that a pretty solid game plan was a necessity. It won't work if you just go in and start leafing through boxes. There is a finding aid for the Peterson Collection that the Missouri History Museum/Missouri Historical Society has that should help. It is a type of index that is dozens of page long and provides an overview on the basics of what is in each folder--names, basic details of what is in the document, etc. As I recall, back in '03 or '04 the Historical Society emailed it to me as an attachment. I have searched through my back emails but can't find it. Maybe they sent it to me on a disk. It is a pretty big electronic file though.

Anyway, I went through the finding aid section by section, subsection by subsection, page by page, line by line, and made a lengthy hit list regarding what to ask for before I went to the Museum in person. Once I was at the Museum my time was very limited. Since it would be very easy to get sidetracked by reading and studying the individual documents while there, and thus run out of time, I looked over each one as it was brought out to me, and if it even half-way appeared to be of relevance to my purposes I put in a request to have a copy made. I basically spent eight hours doing this one day, and four hours the next. Afterward I ended up with a big stack of paperwork to wade through and study once I got home. And, as you can see from the footnotes to my Hildebrand book, I hit paydirt more than once in regard to matching up obscure anecdotes from obscure individuals to the stories Hildebrand told.

I'll look through various other resources to see if I still have the digitized finding aid. My recommendation is do not go to the Museum without studying it first, and making notes to refer to once you get there. In the meantime, you might contact the Museum directly and see if they can get it to you.

I apologize for not remembering exactly how I got the finding aid--but I do recall that it was a very essential tool to use.

Here is a link to the Museum's basic page on the Peterson Collection. It's the finding aid, though, that you need to get your hands on....

http://archon.mohistory.org/controlcard.php?id=2087

Don't let that blurb in the collection description about the correspondence primarily relating to the Battle of Pilot Knob throw you off--there are reams of documents on the war in SEMO generally.

Please let us know how your work goes--I know that a lot of us who use this board have an interest in the line of research you are pursuing.