Jefferson book cache found in St. Louis

ST. LOUIS, Feb. 23 (UPI) -- A chance reading of a 19th-century periodical led to discovering in St. Louis a cache of books owned by Thomas Jefferson, university officials said.

Seventy-four volumes comprising 28 book titles owned and annotated by the country's third president turned up in a library at Washington University, The New York Times reported Monday.

The discovery means the Midwestern library has the third-largest repository of Jefferson's books after the Library of Congress and the University of Virginia, the Times reported.

"My reaction was: 'Yes! It makes sense.' It strikes me as particularly appropriate these are in Missouri. Jefferson bought this territory, and we in Missouri identify with him and honor him," said Shirley K. Baker, the university's vice chancellor for scholarly resources and dean of university libraries.

The collection was tracked down by Endrina Tay, the project manager for the Thomas Jefferson Libraries project in Virginia. Jefferson's books were not all kept together, as his heirs sold some to pay his debts, the Times reported.

A colleague of Tay's found in an 1880 edition of The Harvard Register a reference of the collection as a gift from one Harvard alumnus to another. The recipient, and possible relative of the donor, was William Greenleaf Eliot, a founder of Washington University.

"It could have been his parents have died, he's left with 3,000 books -- what should he do with these that would really do good? A great-uncle just founded a new university. If you send them to a university that doesn't even have 3,000 books, it could make a world of difference," said Baker.