The Draper Manuscripts reflect Lyman C. Draper's interest in - the history of the
trans-Allegheny West, a region embracing the western areas of the Carolinas and Virginia,
portions of Georgia and Alabama, the entire Ohio River Valley, and part of the upper
Mississippi Valley, from the period of the frontier conflicts in the 1740s and 1750s to the
American Revolution and the War of 1812.
The collection is composed of nearly 500 volumes of records in a potpourri of formats and
dates. The majority of the fifty series into which the volumes are arranged have titles
appropriate to the core topic, period, or format. Some are titled by the geographical area
covered, such as Illinois Papers, Kentucky Papers, and Pittsburgh and Northwest Virginia
Papers. Others bear the names of men whom Draper had targeted for biographies, including
white border heroes such as Daniel Boone, George Rogers Clark, Simon Kenton, Samuel Brady,
and Lewis Wetzel, and two notable leaders of the Indian opposition, Joseph Brant and
Tecumseh. Several series contain writings by Draper: e.g., Draper's Life of Boone, Border
Forays, The Mecklenburg Declaration, Draper's Biographical Sketches, and Draper's Notes. For
each series, separate finding aids include more detailed discussion of the contents of the
individual volumes within the series.
Although Draper's early inspiration derived from the stories of military experiences of his
father and grandfather in New York and New England, the Draper Manuscripts contain little
from those regions. Draper's Biographical Sketches (Draper Mss P) show his interest in the
northeastern region during his earliest years of reading and research, and there are
occasional documents in other series such as the copies of Thomas Blake's journal and
records relating to the First New Hampshire Regiment in 1781 found in the Frontier Wars
Papers. The bulk of New York Revolutionary references are in the papers of Joseph Brant,
famed Mohawk chief, who led the Iroquois against the American colonists in portions of New
York and Pennsylvania.
Original documents dated in the years from 1740 to 1830 (the period covering Draper's major
historical and biographical concentration and predating the beginning of his own reading,
research, and collecting) constitute a minor segment of the papers. Considered as originals
are contemporary copies of letters and documents; these manuscript copies were usually
prepared by or for the writer or recipient to fulfill various record-keeping purposes in the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries before other duplicating methods were developed
for widespread use.
The few series composed almost wholly of original materials prior to 1830 are the Jonathan
Clark Papers, William Clark Papers, Frontier Wars Papers, Robert Patterson Papers, William
Preston Papers, and David Shepherd Papers. Significant bodies of original early records are,
of course, found in other series. Typical examples are volumes 25-27 in the Daniel Boone
papers and volumes 17, 46-56, and 61-63 in the George Rogers Clark Papers. In numerous other
volumes, however, there are only a few early original manuscripts intermingled with Draper's
notes and correspondence of much later dates. The volume descriptions therefore give
particular attention to original records dated before 1830 and to the names of their
authors, and isolated items are carefully noted. These original eighteenth and early
nineteenth-century papers are of many kinds: personal and official correspondence; journals
and diaries; military muster rolls, payrolls, order books, and receipts; surveyors' notes;
business and legal records; and maps and plats. Many are military in origin and content;
many others pertain to land surveys, sales, and settlement. Although the majority of these
records relate to frontier settlement and unrest from the 1770s into the 1790s, some records
detail militia service and settlement in western Virginia in the pre-Revolutionary decades
and others document the War of 1812 in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys.
Personal papers are much more rare than military or governmental items. Among the examples
of personal records which can be found, however, are correspondence exchanged by the Clark
brothers and their parents (Draper Mss J, L, and M); letters by John Brown Jr., while a
student at William and Mary College written to his - uncle, William Preston (Draper Mss QQ);
a letter from Robert Patterson to his wife Elizabeth expressing his concern for her and
their young daughters should he not survive the Indian warfare of 1786 (1 MM); a letter
written in 1816 by the aging Daniel Boone reflecting his religious beliefs (27 C); and
correspondence on family business and political interests written by Abraham Shepherd to his
brother David (Draper Mss SS). Examples of substantial groups of business records include
correspondence, 1794-1825, of William W. Worsley, Lexington, Kentucky, newspaper editor and
publisher of books and tracts (volumes 5 CC - 7 CC), and commercial letterbooks, 1805-1824,
of James Wier, Kentucky general store proprietor and manufacturer of cotton and hemp
products (21 CC - 22 CC).
Constituting the bulk of the Draper Manuscripts are materials noted, copied, or generated
by Draper during his own research, mainly from 1840 to 1891. Included are drafts of dozens
of letters and questionnaires sent out by Draper; hundreds of letters and reminiscences
received by him; thousands of pages of notes, including records of interviews held during
his extensive travels; copies of documents and of newspaper and periodical articles
transcribed when the originals were not available; and collections of papers of some
contemporary historians and antiquarians which Draper acquired by gift or purchase. Of
special note among the latter are the papers of the brothers Benjamin and Daniel Drake of
Cincinnati, and those of the Kentucky Presbyterian minister and historian, John Shane.
To modern scholars, Draper's view of the history of the American frontier seems narrow and
simplistic, for he saw it primarily as a series of military events, and his heroes were the
soldiers, scouts, and settlers who battled Indians, the British, and Tory sympathizers as
white settlement advanced westward. Nevertheless, because Draper sought and collected
virtually untapped manuscript and oral sources, and because he was an indefatigable
collector who preserved whatever he gathered, a truly unique and significant collection
resulted, one with resources far more varied than Draper's own historical viewpoint might
suggest. The diligent researcher can discover considerable data on social and economic
factors in the collection. Numerous early records and later notes pertain to land companies,
their promoters, and the role they played in settlement; other records illustrate the legal
entanglements from conflicting surveys encountered by land claimants, whether small tract
holder or large investor. Letters, account books, and receipts reveal not only the problems
of supplying troops with the necessities of food, clothing, transportation, and ammunition
but also the sources and the monetary values of these supplies. The reader who takes time to
decipher the tight cramped handwriting and cryptic abbreviations of John Shane will find
that he was intensely interested in the everyday life of the early Kentucky pioneers. The
interviews Shane recorded-he too was a pioneer in oral history-contain many such
reminiscences, describing for example, the plight of those who had to abandon feather beds
and other treasured possessions when their horses were stolen on their westward trek, the
inspiration afforded by Baptist prayers and hymn singing on the long trail from Virginia to
Kentucky, the planting of fields and orchards with seeds carefully carried from the farm
left behind in the east, the making of crude cabin furniture and utensils, wild-game
hunting, sugar and salt making, weaving cloth from nettles and buffalo wood, illnesses and
inadequate medical and surgical treatments, and the pleasures of weddings and dances.
Lyman Draper did not foresee the burgeoning interest in the history of women and of
minorities which has surged out of social activist movements in the third quarter of the
20th century. Nor did he anticipate that genealogy would become virtually a national pastime
by the 1970s, a form of research pursued by persons of many ethnic and racial backgrounds.
Yet the Draper Manuscripts are rich in these areas. As a biographical and historical
researcher, Draper was usually interested in women as individuals only if they had played
some role in border events which he intended to chronicle or in the lives of frontiersmen
whose biographies he proposed to write. Thus in the Draper Manuscripts there are letters and
articles devoted to the bravery of Elizabeth Zane in the 1782 siege of Wheeling, to several
women in the Carolinas who were reported to have warned patriotic Whigs of impending Tory
attacks during the Revolution, and to numerous frontier women who were subjected to Indian
raids and captivity. Of the original manuscripts Draper gathered, a few were written by or
to eighteenth-century women. Among these are business and legal documents signed by women
and occasional personal letters such as those written by William Harrod and Robert Patterson
to their wives and by Anne Christian to her husband William. Within the collection there are
interviews and conversations recorded by Draper and his contemporaries from approximately
1,200 persons, of whom about 230 were women. Many other women were numbered among his
correspondents. Nevertheless, he usually regarded women only as informants for his research
topics and rarely sought information on their own lives and attitudes.
Casually reported in letters and interviews are the services of enslaved African Americans
who served as soldiers in the Revolution and Native American Indian conflicts. Other blacks
who migrated west as slaves or “free Negroes” are also occasionally mentioned.
Oral information and recollections mainly concerning events of the Revolutionary period were
obtained from several African Americans: “Aunt Phyllis,” daughter of an African
who participated in the Revolution in South Carolina; “Aunt Polly” and Edmund
Bears, son of “Soldier Tom,” former slaves of the family of Thomas Sumter;
Samuel Kennedy, servant of the Winn family in Tennessee; and Daniel Strother, longtime
resident of Vincennes beginning in 1784. Rachael Johnson, a survivor of the two sieges of
Wheeling, was interviewed twice by Draper. Some of Draper's post-Civil War correspondents
allude to racial tensions in the South.
Draper accepted the forcible expropriation of Native American lands east of the Mississippi
as inevitable; and he shared the belief in “Manifest Destiny” so prevalent among
white Americans during his lifetime. In “Border Forays” he and Consul W.
Butterfield luridly dramatized atrocities attributed to some Native American warriors during
the Revolution and minimized some equally barbarous and deceitful acts perpetrated by
European Americans against Native Americans. Nevertheless, Draper selected Joseph Brant and
Tecumseh as subjects for prospective biographies. He also consulted and interviewed Indians
during his research projects, often with tact and with commendation for the information he
received. The interviews which Draper recorded or collected reveal cultural thought and
attitudes, and tribal history, traditions, and legends. Notable examples are his interviews
with Governor Blacksnake, a New York Seneca, and those with members of the Shawnee tribe who
had been removed to Kansas.
Draper also gave some attention to the influence of a few individual Native American women,
including Nancy Ward, a Cherokee, and Molly Brant, sister of the Mohawk leader Joseph Brant.
Among the papers Draper collected are those of Richard Butler, Indian commissioner in
1785-1786, who kept journals of his meetings with the Ohio River bands, recorded legends
about the origin of the Shawnee tribe and the traditional history of its migrations as
recounted to him orally by some of the elders, and attempted to compile a Shawnee
vocabulary. Descriptive commentaries on the life and culture of both sexes exist in the
papers of two Indian agents: John Johnston who had lived with the Shawnee, Miami, and other
Ohio Valley tribes; and Thomas Forsyth, whose career was centered among the Sauk and Fox and
the Kickapoo tribes of the Illinois and upper Mississippi River region. William Martin's
letters give recollections of Cherokee he had known and a candid statement of his attitude
toward his trader father's attachment to his Cherokee mistress. Reminiscences by Stephen
Ruddell, adopted by the Shawnee after his capture in 1782, describe his youthful years with
Tecumseh, whom Ruddell had known like a brother. Moreover, biographical material gathered by
Draper not only documents the military events in which his subjects were involved, but also
contains information on other broader aspects of racial tensions between the two groups.
Reminiscences, letters, and interviews give hints and revelations about the problems of
social, economic, and cultural adjustment faced by children of American Indian or of
American Indian-European American parentage who were raised and educated among whites, such
as Joseph Brant, Billy Caldwell, and Captain Jim Logan.
The contemporary nineteenth-century milieu in which Draper lived is also reflected in the
letters he received. Though Draper's historical queries usually formed the core of his
correspondents' replies, writers often could not refrain from discussing politics,
education, religion, or other current topics. As many of the writers were Southerners, the
Civil War, Reconstruction policies, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan all elicited sharp
commentary. The guide entries and index call attention to interesting and significant
discussions of nineteenth-century topics.
The Draper Manuscripts contain few systematically recorded family histories or genealogies,
but genealogical researchers may find some pertinent original early documents as well as
innumerable miscellaneous biographical references scattered through Draper's correspondence
and notes. Although he sometimes investigated the antecedents of the men he had selected for
biographies and frequently sought descendants as possible sources for information or for
manuscripts, the gathering of genealogical data was almost always incidental to his
historical and biographical studies. For the family historian, the Draper collection offers
a wealth of information on social, economic, and cultural conditions which frontier
forebears may have experienced, even when information on particular individuals or families
is sparse or lacking.
Documents in the collection vary not only in format but in reliability and accuracy. As the
principles of historical editing had not been carefully defined in the nineteenth-century,
some copies of earlier records may contain word alterations, unmarked omissions, or
punctuation changes as well as unintentional copyist's mistakes. Draper himself frequently
corrected his correspondents' spelling and grammar, underlined words for emphasis, and made
other annotations on or beside the text. Although he was tireless in the pursuit of accuracy
in the substance of the information he gathered, interviews and letters may still contain
contradictions and errors which the researcher may discover and must try to correct or
reconcile through use of other sources.
The reader should be neither discouraged by nor disparaging of the limitations arising from
earlier editorial and historical concepts held by Lyman Draper, for they are far outweighed
by the enduring values of the collection that bears his name. Although he did not fulfill
his ambitions as an author, through his research and collecting techniques Draper created
the first great collection of manuscript sources on the early westward movement. Thanks to
his persistence in gathering documentary data, to his pioneer appreciation of the value of
oral history, and to his bequest insuring preservation of his collection, many unusual and
significant resources, which would otherwise have been lost, destroyed, or unrecorded, still
exist and remain worthy of continued study and reevaluation by generations of new
researchers.
Not included in the Draper Manuscripts were many personal and professional papers of
Draper. Entitled Lyman C. Draper - Wisconsin Historical Society Papers (Wis Mss DY), this
collection is composed primarily of correspondence. The majority of the letters pertain to
Draper's activities as executive of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Nevertheless
there are also numerous letters and a few notebooks concerning his private collection; these
provide additional information on his collecting trips, on donors of some segments of the
Draper Manuscripts, and on his writing aspirations and publishing ventures. This
supplemental collection of Lyman C. Draper Wisconsin Historical Society Papers has not been
microfilmed. Although no descriptive register is available, the Society has an unpublished
index by name of correspondents.
Although overshadowed on the national scene by the wonders of the World's Columbian
Exposition in Chicago and by the problems of a serious financial panic, the opening of the
Draper Manuscripts to the public also occurred in 1893-an event of lasting significance not
only for thousands of subsequent researchers but also for the State Historical Society of
Wisconsin as owner of the collection. For more than forty years the Draper Manuscripts
dominated the reference service and the finding aids produced by the Society's Manuscripts
staff. By 1905 Thwaites stated that “the reputation of our collection, particularly of
the Draper manuscripts, is now so widespread that almost every mail brings one or more
inquiries concerning it, from all parts of the country, and the library is frequently
visited by scholars from without the state,... who are chiefly attracted by these priceless
archives.”
Thwaites had already recognized the need to provide finding aids for these researchers. In
1902 he first proposed having the entire collection calendared, a monumental project he
assigned to Louise Phelps Kellogg. This plan was soon aborted in favor of two other
possibilities: the preparation of a general summary guide to the collection and the editing
and publication of a series of volumes of selected documents. The guide, entitled Descriptive List of Manuscript Collections of the State Historical Society
of Wisconsinedited by Thwaites, came off the press late in 1906. For the majority
of the fifty series, the Descriptive Listhad been the sole
finding aid available, although it has been out-of-print since 1956. Unfortunately the
volume was marred by numerous typographical inaccuracies and by many incomplete, unbalanced,
or meager volume descriptions-all serious defects which the Society did not wish to
perpetuate by reprinting. Instead, this 1983 Guideis designed
to fully supersede its 1906 predecessor. Not only does the new Guideincorporate all of the useful data compiled by Thwaites, but also it
contains much more comprehensive and detailed volume descriptions and indexes. In these new
entries greater emphasis has been given to original pre-1830 manuscripts, to unusual or
significant commentaries in letters by Draper's nineteenth-century contemporaries, and to
resources pertaining to women and to minorities. Found in the appendices but usually not in
the descriptive text are names of Draper's correspondents and interviewees, Revolutionary
War pension applicants, authors of clipped newspaper and periodical articles, and subjects
of obituary notices. A separate appendix also individually describes the hundreds of maps
found in the collection. For the 1980 microfilm edition there is also a detailed reel list.
Comprehensive as the new Guide is, it does not constitute the
sole finding aid or a complete master index to the Draper Manuscripts. For a thorough
search, a researcher may need to examine other earlier Draper-related volumes prepared by
the Society, particularly their detailed indexes.
The documentary series began in 1905 and resulted in five volumes in the next dozen years.
The first three were edited jointly by Thwaites and Kellogg and funded for State Historical
Society publication by the Wisconsin Society of the Sons of the American Revolution; the
last two were edited by Kellogg alone and published by the Society as volumes in the Wisconsin Historical Collectionsseries. Titles include:
Thwaites and Kellogg, Documentary History of Dunmore's War,
1774(Madison, 1905).
Thwaites and Kellogg, Revolution on the Upper Ohio,
1775-1777(Madison, 1908).
Thwaites and Kellogg, Frontier Defense on the Upper Ohio,
1777-1778(Madison, 1912).
Kellogg, Frontier Advance on the Upper Ohio, 1778-1779
(Madison, 1916).
Kellogg, Frontier Retreat on the Upper Ohio, 1779-1781
(Madison, 1917).
The selections were chosen from numerous Draper series, and each book was carefully
indexed. Dunmore's Warwas reproduced in enlarged facsimile in
1974 by C.J. Carrier Company, Harrisonburg, Virginia, but all of the five titles have been
included in the State Historical Society of Wisconsin/Microfilming Corporation of America
microfiche packet (1981).
Documentary publication, even of selected records, required more money and staff than the
Society could provide. Therefore, Thwaites's original concept of calendaring the collection
was revived. Between 1915 and 1929, three volumes of a calendar series were published, which
covered five of the Draper series most frequently consulted by genealogists. Compiled by
Louise Phelps Kellogg, Mabel Clare Weaks, and a corps of other Manuscripts assistants, the
published titles were:
Preston and Virginia Papers, covering Draper Mss QQ and ZZ
(Madison, 1915).
Kentucky Papers, covering Draper Mss CC (Madison, 1925).
Tennessee and King's Mountain Papers, covering Draper Mss XX
and DD (Madison, 1929).
The Great Depression of the 1930s brought calendar publication too a halt, although
typescript calendars were readied for several other series:
George Rogers Clark, Draper Mss J. - Published by McDowell.
Frontier Wars Papers, Draper Mss U.
David Shepherd Papers, Draper Mss SS.
South Carolina Papers, Draper Mss TT.
South Carolina in the Revolution Miscellanies, Draper Mss UU.
Thomas Sumter Papers, Draper Mss VV. - Published by McDowell
The three published calendars were reissued in book form in 1979 by Cook-McDowell
Publications of Owensboro, Kentucky. All of the calendars, published and typescript, have
been issued on microfiche in 1981 by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin and
Microfilming Corporation of America.
By the time economic conditions improved in the late 1930s and early 1940s, changes in the
Society's administrative leadership and Manuscripts and research staffs brought new
viewpoints to the fore. The Society embarked on an aggressive program of manuscript
acquisitions in a broad array of more current areas of interest. Largely twentieth century
in scope, these acquisitions have deserved and been the topic of numerous descriptive
publications by the Archives Division staff. Although calendar publication was not revived
until the 1970-1981 Draper Project, the Draper Manuscripts were not neglected, and attention
continued to be given to the needs of researchers and to the physical preservation of the
collection.
Damage to the Draper Manuscripts occasioned by heavy reference use has been a major concern
of the collection's administrators. In 1909 Thwaites began sending volumes to the Emory
Record Preserving Company of Taunton, Massachusetts, where the majority of the documents in
each volume were inlaid by hand and the new pages rebound. By 1920, 113 volumes had been so
treated. These handsome volumes have proved most durable. Thwaites's successor as
superintendent, Milo M. Quaife, also instituted a repair shop within the Society, where an
undetermined number of Draper volumes were given page and binding repairs during the few
years the shop existed. No subsequent major restoration efforts were undertaken until 1940,
when Superintendent Joseph Schafer announced that twenty-five volumes of Draper Manuscripts
had been microfilmed. However, these first films covering the Preston Papers, Tennessee
Papers, and a portion of the King's Mountain Papers were barely legible, and further filming
was suspended due to World War II shortages. When microfilm again became available near the
close of the war, a second attempt was made with equally dismal and unacceptable results.
Finally, thanks to improved postwar film stock and new cameras, work began for the third
time in 1946, some volumes being filmed at the Society and some at the University of
Chicago. Completed in the spring of 1949, the Draper Manuscripts became the nation's first
large manuscript collection to be issued as a documentary microfilm publication.
The microfilming process itself further damaged some of the volumes, for tight bindings
sometimes had to be cut or broken in order to copy texts lost in the centerfolds. During the
1950s and 1960s, forty-five volumes were restored by the Barrow method of lamination, but
increasing expense and other factors compelled the abandonment of this program.
Although about seventy complete sets of the 1949 film edition have been sold to libraries
in all parts of the United States, and many partial sets or single series have been
distributed to other North American libraries and individual researchers, the anticipated
decline in Draper reference inquiries never materialized. Thus, as a fitting commemoration
of the Bicentennial years of American nationhood, the Society again focused attention on the
Draper Manuscripts. The several facets of the Draper Project of 1970-1981-the new microfilm
edition, the finding aids and biography on microfiche, and the Guide-have all been designed to make the collection more widely available and
more easily researched. With the completion of the project, the fragile, worn original
volumes may be honorably retired from general reference and research use after nearly ninety
years of public service.
-- Scope and Content from the Introduction of Josephine L. Harper's Guide to the Draper Manuscripts. Portions of the Scope and Content were edited
for clarity and language in 2022.
