Summary Information
Draper Manuscripts: Rudolph-Ney Papers
1816-1890
Draper Mss RR
2.0 cubic feet (10 volumes)
Wisconsin Historical Society (Map)
Papers and research materials gathered by Lyman Draper in an attempt to unravel two curious and mystery-filled nineteenth-century rumors involving three historical people: Peter S. Ney, an eccentric schoolteacher active in the Carolinas and Virginia from 1821 to 1846; Michel Ney (1769-1815), a French military leader allegedly executed by a firing squad in December 1815; and Michael Rudolph, a Maryland officer in the Revolution and later a member of Wayne's army who reportedly disappeared in a shipwreck in the West Indies in 1794. When intoxicated, Peter S. Ney claimed to be the French General Michel Ney and to have escaped his publicized execution and fled to America. The other popular legend is that Michael Rudolph had survived the shipwreck, and assumed a new identity and had achieved a second military career as the famed Marshal Ney of France.
Descriptions of the volumes are copied from the Guide to the Draper Manuscripts / by Josephine Harper. Out of date and offensive language may be present. This collection is also available as a microfilm publication. Forms part of the Lyman Copeland Draper Manuscripts. The fifty series included in the Draper Manuscripts have been cataloged individually. See the Draper Manuscripts Overview, and the Guide to the Draper Manuscripts / by Josephine Harper (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1983) for further information. There is a restriction on use to this material; see the Administrative/Restriction
Information portion of this finding aid for details.
English
http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-draper0rr ↑ Bookmark this ↑
Scope and Content Note
Included are correspondence; notes; accounts; original documentation of the three men consisting of correspondence, military orders, poems, writings, and school records; newspaper clippings; biographical and bibliographic information; accounts of the exhumation of the body of Peter S. Ney in 1887; and portraits of Marshal Ney.
Correspondents include others interested in the Rudolph-Ney story, George Bancroft, J.K. Tefft, and Ney's pupil, Sarah Emeline Andrews. Also included is a letter of Mary C. Dalton's that contains brief comments on the noted trapper and Indian agent Christopher (Kit) Carson and on her associations with the Carson family.
Administrative/Restriction Information
PHOTOCOPY RESTRICTION: Photocopying originals is not permitted; researchers may copy from the microfilm available in the Library.
Contents List
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Draper Mss RR
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Series: 1 RR (Volume 1)
: Draper notes, biographical and bibliographical, about Michel Ney and Peter S. Ney, followed by correspondence in the 1880s from the latter's pupils giving anecdotes and recollections about Ney's appearance, language, and behavior. There are copies of a letter (1828) by Ney and of a composition on Martin Van Buren and the United States Bank reputedly authored by him. Numerous clipped newspaper articles are scattered throughout this volume.
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Series: 2 RR (Volume 2)
: Additional Draper correspondence, mainly 1885-1887, on Peter S. Ney and his claims to have been Marshal Ney, with additional notes and clippings. Some materials contain accounts of the medical exhumation of the body of Peter S. Ney in 1887, a project instigated by Draper to try to ascertain if the skull had been trepanned, an operation known to have been performed on Marshal Ney. One of Mary C. Dalton's letters (2 RR 14) contains brief comments on the noted trapper and Indian agent, Christopher (Kit) Carson and on her associations with the Carson family.
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Series: 3 RR (Volume 3)
: Mainly Draper correspondence, 1881-1887, with additional notes, bibliography, and clippings, and a few manuscripts of earlier date. Many of these papers are concerned with the life of Michael Rudolph and the tales and traditions identifying him with Marshal Ney. Draper not only received correspondence on the topic from other authors, from descendants of Rudolph, and from the secretary of the American embassy in Paris, but he also collected a few letters of scattered dates, 1837-1851, written by George Bancroft and J.K. Tefft, whose interest in the Rudolph-Ney story had preceded his own. The earliest original manuscript in the volume is a certificate (1831) of good conduct written and signed by Peter S. Ney for one of his Virginia pupils, Sarah Emeline Andrews. Numerous clippings relate to both Neys as well as to Rudolph and include a few poems authored by Peter S. Ney.
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Series: 4 RR (Volume 4)Draper correspondence, 1885-1887, and newspaper clippings. The majority of the incoming letters and articles discuss the life and physical appearance of Peter S. Ney. In both manuscript and printed materials there are additional accounts of the exhumation of his corpse in 1887. One letter writer commented on an earthquake experienced in the Carolinas in August, 1886 (4 RR 31).
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Series: 5 RR - 6 RR (Volumes 5-6)
: Two volumes containing copious notes and extracts copied by Draper from published sources concerning the life, career, and family of Marshal Michel Ney. At the beginning of each volume Draper placed a rough chronological outline and index to the notes.
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Series: 7 RR (Volume 7)
: Copies of writings, 1823-1846, by Peter S. Ney, accompanied by additional Draper correspondence, 1885-1887, and newspaper articles about Ney. Half of the volume is filled by copies of Ney's poems and other writings transcribed by Draper from Ney's scrapbook loaned in 1888 by J.G. Ramsey of Rowan County, North Carolina. Also copied were several letters, 1845-1846, written by Ney to James Franklin Graham.
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Series: 8 RR (Volume 8)A volume containing two sections: 1) Primarily incoming Draper correspondence, 1885-1890, and miscellaneous rough notes. Most of these papers deal with the life of Peter S. Ney. 2) Original documents by Marshal Michel Ney, Peter S. Ney, and Michael Rudolph. Marshal Ney's papers, 1799-1806, include three orders and one military letter written in French. Three letters, 1784, 1792-1793, comprise Michael Rudolph's papers. The two later items were addressed to George M. Bedinger and discussed western campaigns against the Indians and life in the United States Army. One (1792) bears an extensive annotation about Rudolph by Bedinger. Papers of Peter S. Ney are much more numerous. They include inscriptions on title pages to books, arithmetic problems, penmanship exercises, signed award of merit certificates for his pupils, a notebook containing his stenographic or shorthand system, a tuition schedule for his school in Catawba Springs, North Carolina, in 1841-1842, and annotated pages from a History of Scotland (1830) by Sir Walter Scott. A few engraved portraits of Marshal Ney open the section of original manuscripts, and some newspaper clippings are scattered through both portions of the volume.
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Series: 9 RR (Volume 9)
: Miscellaneous newspaper and periodical articles, 1816-1896. Contemporary accounts of the trial and execution of Marshal Ney and later discussions of the reports identifying him with Michael Rudolph and Peter S. Ney are included.
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Series: 10 RR (Volume 10)
: Peter S. Ney's personal copy of Philip Buttmann's Greek Grammar (Boston, 1822). The title page bears an autograph signature of Ney with a brief note on his purchase of the book, and there are extensive annotations and marginal commentaries by him elsewhere in the volume.
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