Summary Information
Draper Manuscripts: Daniel and Benjamin Drake Papers
1787-1853
- Drake, Daniel, 1785-1852
- Drake, Benjamin, 1794-1841
Draper Mss O
0.5 cubic feet (2 volumes)
Wisconsin Historical Society (Map)
Papers of two brothers, Daniel Drake (1785-1852), physician, scientist, educator, and historian; and Benjamin Drake (1795-1841), attorney, author, and biographer; prominent residents of Cincinnati, Ohio, primarily concerning the history of Cincinnati and the Miami River area of Ohio. Included are notes and essays on the geography, minerals, and plants of the Old Northwest and on Indian antiquities in Ohio (including maps); correspondence (1808-1853), including Cincinnati anniversary materials (1838); a certified copy of the 1804 Sauk and Fox treaty; business and legal documents (1787-1816); a biography of Presbyterian minister John P. Campbell; obituaries; interview notes; and clippings.
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 Out of date and offensive language may be present.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-draper00o ↑ Bookmark this ↑
Biography/History
Daniel Drake and Benjamin Drake spent their boyhood years in Kentucky, where the Drake family had moved from New Jersey in 1788; both had studied for their professions of medicine and law in Cincinnati; and both had a wide range of other scientific and historical interests, on which they lectured, wrote, and published. Daniel was the author of Notices of Cincinnati (1810), later enlarged to Natural and Statistical View or Picture of Cincinnati and the Miami Country (1816). His brother prepared Cincinnati in 1826 (1827) as a publication to attract immigrants, was a frequent contributor of historical articles to newspapers and periodicals, and wrote biographies of Black Hawk (1838), William Henry Harrison (1840, coauthored with C. S. Todd), and Tecumseh (1841). Both brothers took active roles in civic life and events such as the Cincinnati anniversary celebration of December 1838. After Benjamin's death, Daniel acquired many of his brother's papers; after Daniel's death, Draper purchased the notes, correspondence, and manuscripts on historical topics for $320.00 when Daniel's son-in-law patriotically contributed them for auction at the Great Western Sanitary Fair in St. Louis in 1864.
Related Material
Daniel and Benhamin Drake's papers which relate to Tecumseh are in the Tecumseh Papers (Draper Mss YY).
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 O
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Series: 1 O (Volume 1)Mainly correspondence, 1815-1839, pertaining to the history of Cincinnati and the Miami River region of Ohio, and notes and drafts for historical addresses and publications on that region. At the beginning of the volume are inventories of Daniel Drake's historical manuscripts, which were compiled after his death and which list papers that had originally belonged to his brother Benjamin. Although a few letters were written by Daniel Drake, most were written by others primarily during the Cincinnati anniversary observance (1838). Among the writers were Samuel Dick, A.H. Dunlevy, Isaac Dunn, Ezra Ferris, Luke Foster, Daniel and Mary Gano, Thomas Jessup, John P. Jones, Elam P. Langdon, Darius Lapham, Richard Henry Lee, James Lyon, Robert T. Lytle, John McLean, Robert Patterson, Rebecca Reeder, John Reily, Elijah Slack, and O.W. Spencer. An incomplete and undated manuscript electioneering handbill bears a pencil drawing of a uniformed bell ringer reading a proclamation. Only a few printed items are scattered through the volume: a handbill advertising a lottery to benefit Cincinnati University as authorized by an 1807 statute; a circular (1814) publicizing the Miami Bible Society, accompanied by a copy of its constitution and a blank form for subscriptions; and an article “Cincinnati in 1835” by Benjamin Drake from the Western Monthly Magazine (January 1836).
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Series: 2 O (Volume 2)A varied assortment of original manuscripts written or acquired by the Drakes. Found in this volume are notes on prehistoric Indian antiquities in Ohio with many maps and diagrams; notes and essays on geographical, mineralogical, and botanical features in the region between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River; drafts of a short biography of John P. Campbell (1768-1814), Presbyterian minister, author, and antiquarian in Kentucky and Ohio; obituaries for William Goforth (1731-circa 1807), Ohio legislator and judge, and Robert H. Smith (d. 1812), physician in Milford, Ohio; notes on interviews in the 1830s with a few Ohio pioneers; a brief journal and notebook (1788) of Israel Ludlow; and an Ohio certificate to practice law (1806) issued to John Armstrong. Also included are a few other business and legal documents, 1787-1816, relating to the Cincinnati area and bearing signatures of William Goforth, William Ludlow, John Reily, Arthur St. Clair, Jr., the elder John Cleves Symmes, and other early residents; a statistical abstract of the census of 1800 in the Northwest Territory; notes on Indian treaties and traditions, and a certified copy (1838) of the treaty of November 3, 1804, with the Sauk and Fox; and correspondence of scattered dates, 1808-1853. Although a few of these letters were sent to Daniel Drake, most are in small groups addressed to Edwin R. Campbell, Gaylord Clark, A. Goforth, and John C. Wright. Among the many signers of letters were J.H. Beard, P.E. Boone, E.A. Brackett, J. Ross Browne, Mann Butler, L.J. Cist, Lewis Collins, D.C. Cooper, A.H. Dunlevy, Isaac Dunn, Ezra Ferris, Godfrey N. Frankenstein, Daniel Gano, John H. Piatt, Jesse Reeder, James H. Rice, A.N. Riddle, John Cleves Short, Thomas H. Shreve, Andrew Small, William L. Sonntag, John W. Van Cleve, and John Woods. A small pen-sketched self-portrait of Frankenstein is found in an undated fragment of one of his letters.
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