The Joseph T. Dodge Papers are organized as Unbound Correspondence, Genealogical Materials, Notebooks, Letterbooks, and Business Records. Originally cataloged under call number Wis Mss RR, these documents were microfilmed in 1975(?) and the originals discarded because of their poor physical condition.
The letterbooks are extensive and contain letters written from various points, depending, of course, on Dodge's location. They begin at Janesville; later they are written from Monroe, Wisconsin; Winona, St. Paul, and Hastings, Minnesota; Painesville, Ohio; and various points in Montana. They are chiefly letters to his superiors and to his subordinates, but include a number to his brother Clark [A. C. Dodge], these latter having to do principally with lots and lands Joseph Dodge owned or with the planing mill which his brother operated at Monroe and in which Joseph Dodge had an interest.
His superiors were officials of various railroads or railroad construction companies, such as E. H. Brodhead; S. S. Merrill, general manager of Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway; Angus Smith, general manager and later president of the Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway; Russell Sage, president of the Minnesota Railway Construction Company and vice president of the Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway; Edmund Rice, president of the St. Paul & Chicago Railway; Adam Anderson, chief engineer of the Northern Pacific; and Frederick Billings, president of the Northern Pacific. There are also some copies of letters in the volume for 1867-1870 by William Crooks, chief engineer of the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad.
The subject matter of the letters is rather technical--the locating and building of various railroad lines. This involves the routes that the proposed lines are to take; estimates of cost of construction--embankments, excavations, erection of trestles, laying of tracks, and building of bridges and depots; legal matters such as securing rights of way; financial matters--purchase of materials (such as rails, ties, timber), certification of accounts, and requisitions for tools, utensils, and equipment; securing of government mail contracts; matters of personnel, labor, and wages; reports on progress; solution of engineering problems, such as those involved in the building of the Bozeman and other tunnels; questions of repair; relations with localities; and advertisement of swamp lands. There is occasional indirect information or scraps of material on elections, votes, “local political interference,” and bills in Congress.
Included are a number of personal letters. These pertain to the sale of lots which Dodge owned in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota; his employment when railroad work was slack as book and magazine agent, school teacher, agent for a fence company in Ohio, insurance agent, and player in the making, engraving, and selling a map of Green County, Wisconsin; and his work for the War Department, surveying the battlefields (in 1867-1868) of Sherman's campaign.
There are two volumes of bills, dating 1871-1884, for timber, iron, and other materials for the Hastings & Dakota Railroad, and letters concerning that road covering about the same period.
Miscellaneous volumes date from 1848 to 1894, and include copies of a volume of records of vouchers, inventories, and statements for the Northern Pacific Railroad, Rocky Mountain Division (1883-1884), of which Dodge was division engineer; a book of estimates of accounts (1885-1894) covering a period part of which Dodge was consulting engineer for the St. Paul & Duluth Railroad and chief engineer of Montana Central Railway; a volume (1871-1882) of reports of terminal progress, of force, and bridge bills; five timebooks; and eight other volumes, mostly estimates, memoranda, mathematical tables, records of land and lots, estimates of masonry, personal ledgers, and notebooks.
The unbound material contains a number of letters received in the 1870s and 1880s, chiefly from Russell Sage, Frederick Billings, and Adam Anderson, and from manufacturers of iron and other railroad materials. There are also, up to about 1888, a number of blueprints and drawings; estimates, contracts, and agreements; specifications; an abstract of deeds of the St. Paul & Chicago Railway, St. Paul to La Crescent; and reports of operations of a planing mill at Monroe.
However, the bulk of the unbound material pertains to the genealogy of the Dodge family (1892-1898). This material consists of letters written in reply to requests for information and replies to questionnaires sent out seeking information for Genealogy of the Dodge Family of Essex County, Massachusetts (1629-1894)--two volumes on which Dodge was employed for the ten years following his retirement in 1887. There are some copies of town records, chiefly in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, which Dodge made while writing these two volumes.
A few miscellaneous personal letters, scattered through the 1890s, regard collection of rents in West Superior, extension of mortgages, insurance, spiritualist society activities, and a few letters from the First National Bank of Great Falls, Montana.
