I forwarded the earlier post regarding the imaginery St. Petersburg to a colleague who has studied early maps of Missouri. I thought the Forum might be interested in his reply which I am pasting in below with his permission: ~~~~~ In an 1820 atlas by C.V. Lavoisne there is a map of the United States drawn by John Melish and engraved by Benjamin Tanner which includes a town in Missouri called Petersburg located south of Fort Mason and north of St. Charles. Petersburg appears to be on the Mississippi River but due to the scale of the map, it may have been some distance west of it. Petersburg may have been an early name for the present day town of St. Peters, Missouri. Mark Twain may have known of this early community under that name but whether it influenced his renaming Hannibal to St. Petersburg is not documented. (Dave Thomson) ~~~~~ If anyone on the list is familiar with the site or history of the early Petersburg, MO I would be interested in knowing its fate. Barb