Guide to the Manuscripts of the Wisconsin Historical Society

'' ; . ' ' •..;' . : .... ,',',',','..'.', - :.'..' ' lijiiffiii •' ' .'•.. ::'v •' • 855 ' ''• '','' ' ': .•• .':. • ;: .' ' y ' .: ' ;;; . ' ; : ' ' :..' ..'. : ' .. «mn :•; L I B RAHY OF THE U N IVERSITY Of ILLINOIS VJ7S CO 1* ILL HIST. SURVEY Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign http://www.archive.org/details/guidetomanuscripOOstat GUIDE TO THE MANUSCRIPTS OF THE WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY BUILDING, MADISON Guide to the Manuscripts of the Wisconsin Historical Society Edited by ALICE E. SMITH MADISON STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN 1944 Copyright 1944 State Historical Society of Wisconsin Madison One thousand copies of this Guide have been printed in types similar to those designed by Claude Garamond (d. 1561) on Dresden Pamphlet Book paper by Hammersmith-Kortmeyer Co. of Milwaukee £]$, l4Lo£> fljUAAt-. OKoJllS- FOREWORD Wherever American historical manuscripts are known, there the Wisconsin Historical Society is known too. Such a statement can be made chiefly because of the work of that pioneer collector, Lyman C. Draper, who served as the first executive of the Society. Dr. Draper, before he came to Wisconsin in 1852, had collected manuscripts in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, the Carolinas, and other parts of the Old West. He sometimes actually risked his neck to obtain them, traveling more than 60,000 miles, often through rugged wilderness, on horseback, in stagecoach or lumber wagon, by steamboat, or even afoot. The Draper Manuscripts came to the Society by bequest upon his death in 1891. Dr. Draper's respect and love for manuscripts have been shared by the staff of the Society since his day, and the state of Wisconsin, having become conscious of the value of bringing together the raw materials of her history, has furnished a fireproof building, ample equipment for preserving the manuscripts, and an adequate staff to make them available. The people of the state have cooperated by giving many important collections to the Society. This Guide shows what papers have been accumulated in more than ninety years. The Draper Manuscripts have not been included - in the Guide since they are fully covered by the Descriptive List of Manuscripts published by the Society in 1906. The present volume is a work of cooperative scholarship. Miss j Alice E. Smith, curator of the Society's Manuscript Division, de- vised the plan of the Guide, supervised the work, edited the results at several stages, prepared the index, and saw the volume through the press. Schlinkert, l Leroy sometime assistant in the Division, prepared and checked many of the entries. Two workers supplied by the Historical Records Survey of Wisconsin, a branch of the federal Work Projects Administration—James Abajian and Joan Place Swadish—in most cases prepared the entries. The Survey was directed by J. E. Boell, its state supervisor. The Society is proud of its manuscript collection and much gratified by the way the people of Wisconsin appreciate its use- fulness and continue to help it grow. The Society has much regard for the materials of contemporary history and solicits manuscript records from leaders in current Wisconsin affairs. The Wis- consin statesman, industrialist, labor chief, or head of some other activity who leaves the Society his or her manuscripts can be sure that they will be preserved and cherished. But, best of all, he will know that they will be wisely used, that scholars from all over the country will know of them, and that they may help to guide the present while elucidating the past. Edward P. Alexander VI EDITOR'S PREFACE From the beginning of its existence the Wisconsin His- torical Society has been gathering manuscripts relating to the history of the state. The initial contribution was made early in 1849 with a gift of the William Henry papers from Cyrus Woodman of Mineral Point, who remarked, "A letter is rarely written which is not worthy of preservation." When the Civil War broke out, Lyman C. Draper circularized the Badger volunteers, begging them to secure and preserve for the Historical Society records and mementos of their experiences. One of the first acts of Reuben Gold Thwaites as superintendent was to make an excursion to the Fox River Valley, interviewing its French Canadian inhabitants and returning with a mass of papers on the early fur trade. By 1906 the accumulation of manuscripts had reached nearly 75,000 pieces, most of them bound in volumes. That year the Society published a Descriptive List of its holdings, the first guide devoted solely to manuscripts ever issued by an American historical society. In 1940, when the notes for the present Guide were completed, the collection was estimated to contain 620,000 unbound pieces and 2,500 volumes. So rapidly are the records accumulating that now, four years later, they have been increased by almost an additional 100,000 pieces. In these manuscripts gathered so carefully through the first nine decades of the state's existence, lies the story of the region that is now Wisconsin. Among them are the correspondence and diaries and account books of explorers and missionaries, of attorneys, farmers, merchants, and scientists; they include the records of temperance and antislavery societies, of churches, banks, and co- operatives; they tell of the building of roads and harbors, of the establishment of homes, the founding of social institutions, and the development of the commonwealth. The numerous collections of personal papers of public officials—governors, judges, legislators, vii and members of Congress—are admirably supplemented by records from the offices of the governor and secretary of state and other state departments, transferred to the Society by virtue of its position as legal custodian of the state's non-current archives. The Society's primary task is the collecting of records on the history of Wisconsin. Various circumstances, however, have made it the repository of many papers that transcend the state's civil boundaries, and some that do not deal at all with Wisconsin. Outstanding among the latter is the collection of nearly 500 volumes of manuscripts relating to the history of the first Ameri- can West gathered by Dr. Draper. Since the Descriptive List of 1906 was almost exclusively devoted to a survey of these early Americana, and that List is still in print, this volume makes no attempt to cover any part of the Draper Manuscript Collection. Another set of papers that scarcely touches upon Wisconsin in its origins and information is the impressive set of manuscripts known as the John R. Commons Collection. Early in the century a group of University of Wisconsin economists organized a bureau for the systematic gathering of information relating to the history of labor and socialism in the United States. The presence of the remarkable body of source materials that they assembled at the Historical Society has been the inspiration for additional gifts of papers from individuals and organizations having kindred interests. Representative of these are the correspondence of Henry D. Lloyd, the Winnetka, Illinois, reformer; the archives of the Socialist Labor Party; and, too recently received for inclusion in this volume, the papers of the noted economist, Richard T. Ely. A third type of records that reach far beyond Wisconsin in scope came as the result of a search for sources for the study of this region when it was under the dominion of France and Britain and was a neighbor of Spanish Louisiana. The search led to the archives of these countries, and copies of many of their records were secured for the Society's files. From the archives at Wash- ington, D.C., too, have come photostatic copies of thousands of viii — documents dealing with the history of the Wisconsin region up to about 1850. This transcription of records owned by other institutions or in private hands is still going on, most of the recent copies being made on microfilm. It was found necessary to omit from this published Guide descriptions of certain collections of papers. Because of the great number of very small groups, those containing ten or fewer items are not listed herein. Notations on the many sketches of Wiscon- sin biographies and local history do not appear for the same reason. Preparation of analyses of these two groups, of the collection of manuscript genealogies, and of the autograph collections would have retarded the publication of this volume for a long time, and their inclusion would have increased its size by about one half. Copies of records that are available in near-by depositories are for the most part not listed. It is with regret that another collection of manuscripts—those left on deposit have not been itemized in the Guide. In many cases they will probably become the property of the Society, but because of the uncertainty of title to ownership, no mention has been made of them. Save for these exceptions and the Draper Manuscripts, all classes of manuscript records owned by the Society—personal papers, archives of federal, state, and local governments, and records of organizations, irrespective of origin or amount or date of acquisition—have been treated in one alphabetical sequence in this Guide. Up to 1917, accessions were recorded in the annual Proceedings of the Society. With the establishment of the Wisconsin Magazine of History in that year, the practice was begun of making quarter- ly summaries of manuscript acquisitions, the accounts occasionally, as in the cases of the Fairchild, the Vilas, and the McCarthy papers, taking the form of articles on the subjects. Since the provenance of each collection has been traced in these publica- tions, it has not been considered necessary to repeat the in- IX formation in this Guide. It may be well to explain, too, that no attempt has been made herein to evaluate the manuscripts.

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