Title: John H. Tweedy Papers
Inclusive Dates: 1800, 1824, 1832-1890

Creator:

• Tweedy, John Hubbard, 1814-1891

Call Number: Wis Mss DT; Micro 52

Quantity: 1.6 c.f. (8 archives boxes) and 1 reel of microfilm (35mm)

Repository:

Wisconsin Historical Society, Division of Library, Archives, and Museum Collections

Archival Locations:

Wisconsin Historical Society (Map)

COLLECTION MAY BE STORED OFF-SITE: see catalog entry to request materials and for additional information.

Abstract:

Primarily business and political papers of John H. Tweedy, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, attorney and Wisconsin delegate to Congress, 1847-1848, consisting of letters received, 1836-1890, miscellaneous legal papers pertaining to cases in which Tweedy was professionally interested, and letters to Tweedy from his brother Edmund.

Language: English

URL to cite for this finding aid: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-wis000dt

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John Hubbard Tweedy, the fifth child of Samuel and Ann Burr Tweedy, was born in Danbury, Connecticut, on November 9, 1814. The Tweedy family was prominent in Danbury. Tweedy's grandfather, Oliver Burr, had entered hat manufacturing in 1787, and Samuel Tweedy had become a hat manufacturer around 1800. By 1815, the firm of Tweedy and Benedict was sole supplier of hats to a wholesaler who grossed approximately $100,000 a year.

Hat manufacturing was not the only interest of the family. Samuel Tweedy was president of the Danbury Branch of the Fairfield County Bank from 1826 to 1833 and from 1835 to 1864. Edgar S. Tweedy, John's elder brother, followed in his father's footsteps, becoming a director of the Danbury Savings Bank in 1849, and on his father's death taking over the management of the hat factory. Edgar was also interested in railroads, in 1835 becoming a founder of the Fairfield County Road. This railroad eventually evolved into the Danbury and Norwalk Road, of which Edgar was secretary and a director.

John H. Tweedy graduated from Yale in 1834, studied law in Danbury under Reuben Booth, a prominent local lawyer, and received his law degree in 1836 after a year's study at Yale Law School. In October 1836 Tweedy moved west to Milwaukee.

Tweedy, better educated than many Wisconsin lawyers, was a success almost immediately. By 1840 he was prominent enough to secure the appointment as Receiver of the Milwaukee and Rock River Canal Company with a salary of $1000 a year.

In spite of his gaining the semi-political receivership, the political prospects for the young lawyer who considered himself a Whig were not good. Because Martin Van Buren, President of the United States, was a Democrat and devoted to party patronage in the territories, few political offices were open to Whigs. In 1840, however, the Whigs, under the leadership of William Henry Harrison, captured the presidency and Whig fortunes in the territories appeared to be on the rise. To celebrate the event, the Whigs of Wisconsin, who had not previously organized, held a mass meeting in Milwaukee on the first day of 1841. Among the speakers were Tweedy, his future law partner, Hans Crocker, and Jonathan E. Arnold.

Harrison died soon after his inauguration, and the new President, John Tyler, broke with the Whig Party. Territorial Whigs were no more in favor than they had been under Van Buren. In spite of the lack of opportunity, Tweedy continued in politics under both Tyler and his Democratic successor James K. Polk. In 1841 Arnold resigned his seat in the Territorial Council and the people of Milwaukee elected Tweedy for the remainder of the term. Crocker served in the same office after Tweedy's single term. Tweedy represented Milwaukee in the heavily Democratic constitutional convention of 1846. There he was one of the most prominent leaders of the minority, leading unsuccessful campaigns relating to an appointive judiciary, banking, internal improvements, Negro suffrage, and the enforcement of contracts. Only in his support of education did he gain the backing of the convention.

After the convention, Tweedy campaigned against the constitution, and the people of the territory rejected it. Moses M. Strong had been the leader of the majority in the convention, and although he was closely identified with the unpopular constitution the Democrats nominated him for Territorial Delegate. The party split, however, and other candidates also ran. With the opposition divided and tied to the unpopular constitution, Tweedy was able to gain nine more votes than his opponents combined and was elected to Congress. In Congress, Tweedy's major task was the admission of Wisconsin. He argued for the constitution, ratified by the people after a second convention, even speaking for some provisions he had opposed in the first convention.

Following his term in Congress, Tweedy's political fortunes declined. In 1848 he was the Whig candidate for Governor and lost to Nelson Dewey. The next year he was defeated in a race for Mayor of Milwaukee. In 1850 he refused to run for Congress. He served briefly as Postmaster of Milwaukee in 1851, and in 1852 was elected to his last public office, serving a single term in the state legislature. His only public appearance after leaving the legislature was a war speech delivered in 1862.

Politics, for Tweedy, was not an end in itself, but rather a means to further commerce and to serve the people, two activities closely identified in his mind. In the convention he had favored contracts, banking, internal improvements, and Negro suffrage, and all, in his rhetoric at least, were ethical and moral problems. Negro suffrage was neither politically nor commercially profitable to Tweedy. Tweedy served as postmaster not because of the patronage involved, but because Milwaukee needed a qualified man to manage its mails. As soon as the government found a qualified replacement Tweedy resigned. His campaign for mayor followed several months on a committee to propose amendments to the city charter.

Tweedy was much more a businessman and a lawyer than a politician. Like his brother, he was interested in railroads, being a director of both the Mississippi and Milwaukee Railroad and the Milwaukee and Watertown Road. He speculated in land, owning city lots and much farm land, quite often retaining the mortgage after selling the land. He had a large and successful legal business. Although much of his work came from Milwaukeeans, he also did a large amount of legal work for Easterners, especially in land cases. Tweedy continued to practice law after 1852, but most of his attention was given to investments, in land in the 1850s and 1860s, but in the 1870s and 1880s tending towards stocks and bonds.

Although retired from public life, Tweedy still served those causes he favored. Hs was a member of the Free-Soil Committee for Kansas and raised $500 for it. A strong supporter of education, he was a member of the Milwaukee Board of Education, one of the first trustees of Milwaukee Female College, and a member of the board of trustees of Milwaukee Normal Institute and High School.

On one of his several trips to New England he met Anna M. Fisher and they were married in Boston on June 8, 1848. They had four children: James Fisher, John H., Jr., Mariette, and Robert B. John H. Tweedy died in Milwaukee, November 12, 1891, and is buried in Danbury, Connecticut.

The collection contains approximately 1100 paper documents created between 1834 and 1890, only six of which were written by Tweedy himself; plus microfilmed family correspondence.

Much of the correspondence of the 1840s relates to the law and collection business of the firms with which Tweedy was associated. There is also information on his political career, Whig politics, early Milwaukee history, and the Milwaukee and Rock River Canal. For the years of his Congressional delegacy, much of the correspondence relates to services for constituents, although the subjects of Wisconsin's northwestern boundary, the second state constitutional convention, railroads, and the affairs of the Stockbridge Indians are touched upon. Letters from Thomas L. Ogden and Hans Crocker throw light on Tweedy's speculation in Mexican War veterans' land warrants and on his business relations with Samuel S. Breese and other Eastern land speculators. There is some information on construction and financing of early Wisconsin railroads, the Kansas Aid Society of which Tweedy was the Wisconsin member, and the Milwaukee Female College. The correspondence after 1860 is increasingly concerned with brokerage and banking activities in Milwaukee.

On microfilm is Tweedy family correspondence, consisting mainly of letters to John by his brother Edmund from the eastern United States and Europe on varied topics: business matters, travel descriptions, transcendentalism, Unitarianism, French politics around 1848, the Civil War, and U.S. politics.

Further content information is included in the Additional Descriptive Notes below.

The collection is currently arranged in three main categories--correspondence, miscellaneous legal papers, and law cases by title--followed by some miscellaneous items. The filing is inconsistent however; legal papers can be found in the correspondence category and correspondence related to legal cases is in all three categories.

Additional Descriptive Notes prepared by Library Science student John W. Foster, May 1961

A little over half the paper documents are business papers. These are equally divided between Tweedy's law practice and his investments. Dating between 1834 and 1889, the business papers are fairly evenly distributed between 1836 and 1860, with the exception of a great reduction in numbers during the periods of his active involvement in politics. Only a few date prior to 1836 and the number gradually declines after 1860. The legal papers deal almost exclusively with property suits, property taxes, mortgages, and debt collection. Other types of legal matters are represented by one divorce case and one breaking and entering case. The majority of the documents are letters connected with the cases, but there are also lists of cases handled by Tweedy, lists of law books, and a large number of powers-of-attorney.

The other half of the business papers deal with Tweedy's investments. About 100 of the documents are mortgages. The remainder are letters, prior to the 1870s dealing with land sales, mortgage payments, and other aspects of land speculation. After 1870 the majority of the letters are concerned with stocks and bonds, rather than land. Eleven letters, written in the early 1850s deal with railroads, two of them with Canadian railroads.

The legal and business papers originated not only in Wisconsin, but in Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Arkansas, and, in later years, Colorado and California. Among Tweedy's business associates were James Duane Doty, Byron Kilbourn, Alexander Mitchell, Thomas L. Ogden, and S. S. Breese.

Tweedy's political papers are also numerous. His service as Receiver for the Rock River Canal is represented by 10 letters of official nature from Henry Dodge and one on territorial politics from Byron Kilbourn. While on the territorial Council he received 11 letters on various political issues from Jonathan B. Arnold, Kilbourn, William S. Hamilton, and Henry Dodge. Rufus King advised Tweedy on his actions in the 1846 convention in three letters and Marshall Strong discussed the Rock River Canal in one letter during the same period. Tweedy's campaign for Congress is represented by ten letters from Moses M. Strong, Marshall Strong, Francis Randall, and Rufus King among others.

Most of the political papers date from Tweedy's term in Congress. Eight letters from Samuel Ryan, John Rountree, and others advise him of events in the second convention. Thirty-seven letters from T. L. Ogden, Hans Crocker, Rountree, W. S. Hamilton, John Catlin, Samuel Ryan, and others discuss politics in general and specific issues, especially proposals to include the St. Croix valley in Wisconsin. Most of the Congressional papers, 246 in number, are requests for favors ranging from seed catalogues, copies of speeches, and patent applications to requests on behalf of the Stockbridge Indians, applications for military commissions, and demands for new postal routes. Among many others with requests were Louis P. Harvey, Increase A. Lapham, C. Latham Sholes, Samuel Ryan, William S. Hamilton, Rufus King, John Rountree, C. C. Washburn, Francis Randall, and Moses M. Strong. The term in Congress also produced three letters concerning the funeral of John Quincy Adams.

Three letters from Rufus King and Hans Crocker urge Tweedy to run for Governor even though he can't win, and one letter offers him the nomination for Congressman. While in the state legislature Tweedy received 12 letters, mainly on railroad law from Francis Randall, Josiah Noonan, and others, and there is one letter on the same subject from Moses Strong to John Catlin.

Following his retirement from politics, Tweedy received a few letters in the late 1850s soliciting his support for the Republican Party or various Republican candidates, four requesting his support for proposals in Milwaukee, and two seeking his support for a reform of the Republican Party in the 1870s.

Only a few of the letters relate to neither business nor politics. Nine letters from Yale alumni, discussing reunions for the most part and all dating before 1840 with one exception; twelve personal letters from Mrs. Tweedy, Edgar Tweedy, Oliver Tweedy, Marshall Strong, Hans Crocker, Alexander Mitchell, and Thomas L. Ogden; three relating to Tweedy's appointment as postmaster; four concerning the Milwaukee city debt; five letters relating to the Kansas Committee dating between 1854 and 1856; and two letters relating to the Milwaukee Female College (in legal papers) round out the paper portion of the collection.

There are also a few miscellaneous papers, such as an honorary degree from the University of Michigan, a list of stoves sold in Milwaukee in 1854 (in the legal papers), a program for boat races, and a rough draft manuscript biography of Tweedy.

Acquisition Information

Presented by John H. Tweedy, Jr., 1917-1918; by Mary Tweedy, 1924 and 1931; and loaned for microfilming by John H. Tweedy, Milwaukee, Wis., via Frederick Olsen, October 1957.

Wis Mss DT	Correspondence
Box   1	1824-1846
Box   2	1847-1852
Box   3	1853-1890
Micro 52	Microfilmed Family Correspondence
Wis Mss DT	Miscellaneous Legal Papers
Box   4	1800-1849
Box   5	1850-1889; undated
	Law Cases by Title
Box   6	A-L
Box   7	M-Z
Box   8	Accounts, 1834-1890
Box   8	Milwaukee Post Office Papers, 1850-1851
Box   8	House Plans