The earliest unbound records in this collection (save for some Milwaukee land records of the 1830s), are those of the Milwaukee and Beloit Railroad. The road was chartered in 1855 with Horatio Hill as president and James D. Reymert as vice-president. To aid in the construction of the road and in anticipation of the benefits they expected to derive from it, hundreds of farmers along the proposed route gave title to the company for a right of way. These deeds, as well as subscriptions to the stock, agreements, minutes of meetings, reports, receipts for mortgage bonds, and some correspondence, dating from about 1857 to 1859, fill two manuscript boxes.
The reorganized company apparently inherited these papers and William F. Dalrymple, as secretary of the new Milwaukee and Dubuque Railroad Company, filed them with the records of the new concern. There are quantities of letters for a decade beginning about 1880 written by U. B. Hall of New York City, a business associate and agent for J. P. Robinson. Robinson, in his capacity of civil engineer, filed a report on the prospects of the road on December 14,1881. The following year he was in London, seeking financial backing for the construction of the road. Robinson and Hall wrote numerous letters to Dalrymple describing progress in the negotiations in the next few years, and giving innumerable reasons for delays in actually getting the work underway. The collection contains occasional drafts of Dalrymple's replies and a few drafts of his proposals to large railroad companies in the United States that they take over or connect with the proposed line. George H. Noyes, a Milwaukee attorney and for a number of years judge of the county superior court, who handled much of Dalrymple's Milwaukee city property business, also was connected with this railroad, although in these papers he figures most prominently as a director of the Bayfield Transfer Railroad Company and an executor of Dalrymple's estate.
Oliver Dalrymple in 1861 was associated with Horace R. Bigelow in a loan and collection office in St. Paul. His letters to his brother during the Civil War years contain comments and advice on the settlement of a family estate in Pittsfield, Pennsylvania, on investment prospects and opportunities in the West, on his activities as agent for claims arising from the Sioux Outbreak of 1862, and on securing substitutes during the draft in the Civil War.
No more letters from Oliver appear until January 1876, when he proposed terms on which he would purchase and operate wheat lands for his brother and other speculators. "For ten years I have been the largest wheat grower in the Northwest," he wrote at that time. From this and later letters it appears that neither of the two brothers ever made their home in Dakota, but two or more nephews and other members of the family were connected with wheat farms west of Fargo. Their operations were extensive; Oliver wrote early in 1878 that he would have 20,000 acres under the plow by July 4.
The nephews were employed as managers or agents for several tracts in the Red River Valley; letterheads used in their correspondence are from the Grandin Brothers farm, the Cass and Cheney farm, the Watson farm, the Silas A. Dalrymple farm, and the Oliver Dalrymple farm. They reported in considerable detail on crop conditions and prices, and spoke of land sales and settlements and crop storage. A number of letters from grain brokers in Duluth, Minnesota and Buffalo, New York, touch on the subjects of elevators, marketing costs, and transportation. There is little information in the papers on the history of the wheat industry after 1890, save for summaries on the investment shown in the papers dealing with the settlement of William F. Dalrymple's estate and two brief record books on North Dakota lands, 1891-1912.
The first appearance of Bayfield in the papers is found in a letter in 1868 from Andrew Tate, Bayfield County treasurer. For a number of years Tate took care of Dalrymple's tax payments on Bayfield properties and supplied him with brief information on local residents, lumbering, road building, and land sales. Letters and reports from R. D. Pike contain similar observations. Dalrymple's efforts in 1882 and 1883 to push the development of Bayfield are found in drafts of two letters of those dates, one to the Northern Pacific Railroad and one to R. H. Cudlipp, setting forth the advantages of the village as a port and railroad terminus and its attractions for residential and business purposes.
Unbound correspondence from 1891 to the time of Dalrymple's death consists of a continuance of Dalrymple family correspondence, which is largely of a business nature; frequent exchanges of letters between Hale and Dalrymple; and much miscellaneous material on the building and financing of the Bayfield Transfer road and on Dalrymple's Milwaukee investments. This is supplemented by eight volumes of letter books, covering substantially the same years and subjects. There are also three boxes of miscellaneous records for these years dealing with the road, containing such papers as records of board meetings, land contracts, agreements, and court decisions.
Judge Noyes, Hale, and D. M. Smith of Duluth were appointed executors of Dalrymple's estate, and it was probably for the purpose of settlement of his affairs that all his papers were assembled in Bayfield. One box of correspondence, 1900-1906 and two boxes of legal papers in the form of contracts, agreements, appraisals, etc, cover the years of the executors' management of affairs and the settlement.
A number of manuscript maps showing land holdings in the Dakotas and Milwaukee, printed circulars issued by the Bayfield Transfer Company, and other advertising matter on the promotion of settlement in northern Wisconsin that was found in the collection are filed in one box. A set of brief diaries kept by Dalrymple from 1861 to 1891, with only a few years missing, supplements the information in the correspondence.
