Joseph Charless, with a background of printing experience in his native Ireland, in Pennsylvania, and in Kentucky, became the first man to establish a printing press west of the Mississippi River. Meriwether Lewis, Governor of the Territory of Louisiana, was instrumental in bringing Charless to St. Louis, the Territorial capital, and there the printer launched his weekly newspaper, the Missouri Gazette, on July 12, 1808.[67] His awareness of his place in history is demonstrated by a copy of Charless' Missouri & Illinois Almanac, for 1818, printed in 1817, which the State Department Library transferred to the Library of Congress in August 1962. It is inscribed: "A tribute of respect from the first Press that ever crossed the Mississippi."[68]

The earliest example of Missouri printing in the Library of Congress is The Laws of the Territory of Louisiana. Comprising All Those Which Are Now in Force Within the Same, printed at St. Louis by Charless with the imprint date 1808. Besides newspaper issues this was long thought to be the first Missouri imprint. A document of April 29, 1809, appearing on p. 373 proves that it was not completed until after that date, however, and recent authorities have relegated it to second or third place in terms of publication date.[69]

Consisting of 376 numbered pages with a 58-page index, the book is a compilation of the laws of 1804 and 1806-08. Those of 1804 carry over from the compilation for the District of Louisiana, which is the Library's earliest Indiana imprint, and the same law on slavery quoted on p. 41, above, is among those reprinted. Typical of the later laws is "An Act Concerning Strays," from which the following section is presented for its incidental reference to printing:

Sec. 4. Every person taking up a stray horse, mare or colt, shall within two months after the same is appraised, provided the owner shall not have claimed his property during that time, transmit to the printer of some public newspaper printed within this territory, a particular description of such stray or strays and the appraisment thereof, together with the district and place of residence certified by the clerk, or by the justice before whom such stray was appraised, to be inserted in such paper three weeks succesively, for the advertising of which the printer shall receive his usual and stated price for inserting advertisements in his newspaper.