The Grignon, Lawe, and Porlier Papers richly document not only the fur trade in Wisconsin during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century but also the lives of the early settlers and the embryonic social institutions they created. These papers are divided into two series, Correspondence and Legal Papers. These documents were originally bound into 65 volumes and the present organization of the collection reflects this early method of handling records. The following description of the Grignon, Lawe, and Porlier Papers was written by Alice E. Smith, formerly Chief of Research at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.
CORRESPONDENCE, 1800-1884, consists for the most part of the business, personal and official correspondence of three families of Green Bay, arranged in one chronological sequence. Most of the communications are written in French, and although the correspondence dates from 1800 to 1884, about two-thirds of it is for the years 1820 to 1840. A number of the letters have been printed in the Wisconsin Historical Collections, volumes X to XX.
The members of the Grignon, Lawe, and Porlier families were early residents of Green Bay and traded individually or in groups, or served as agents for fur trading companies along the shores of Lake Michigan, on the Fox River and the Wisconsin, and, by way of the Mississippi River, on the St. Croix and the region reaching into what is now Minnesota and the Dakotas and as far south as the Missouri. Their correspondence deals with the many details of the operations of the trade: the transportation of cargoes of goods from Montreal, the departure of the fleets from Mackinac to their wintering places, outfitting the crews, complaints of dissensions among the engagees, reports of the progress of the trade from camps during the winter, discussions of Indian troubles, and above all, reports on the financial end of the business, including reports on returns of goods, lists of prices, market reports, and importunities for payment of debts. Since these agents were in a sense the middlemen acting between the outfitters in Montreal and the winterers in the interior, this correspondence is especially useful in showing connections with the complete operations of the trade.
There are about 175 letters in the collection dated up to the end of the War of 1812, divided about equally among those written to members of the three families: Jacob Franks and his nephew and successor in the trade, John Lawe; Augustin, Louis, and Pierre Grignon; and Jacques Porlier. Among these early letters are occasional reports from traders at Milwaukee, on the Wisconsin, Mississippi, and St. Croix rivers; a few concerning the operations of the short-lived Robert Dickson Company; a considerable number from Frederick Oliva and Jean B. Berthelet, Mackinac traders; and many from Forsyth, Richardson and Company, Montreal outfitters for the Green Bay traders.
A relatively small number of letters bear directly on the War of 1812 in Wisconsin. There is the series of Robert Dickson letters written in 1813-1814 while wintering on Lake Winnebago, most of which were published in the Collections, and scattered ones thereafter mainly connected with his problems of assembling Indian warriors and holding their allegiance for the British; a few reports and complaints from Fort McKay (Prairie du Chien), chiefly by Lieutenant James Pullman and Captain Duncan Graham, on the situation there and the conflicts between the Indian department and the military authorities; a small number of military communications and appointments; and a greatly lessened number of letters on the fur trade, limited largely to complaints and to conjectures about the outcome of the war and its probable effect on the trade.
The correspondence for a few years after the war reflects the unsettled state of the trade, but by about 1820 the ascendancy of the American Fur Company over the Green Bay trade is evident. The great collection of letters from the officials of the company to its agents there give advice and instructions regarding the management of the details of the trade, speak of the organization of members of these three families into the Green Bay Company, of the encroachments of individual traders and independent outfitters, of losses, of the growing indebtedness of the traders, of mortgages and land transfers,
of labor supply, of the work of individual traders, and of attempts on the part of the Green Bay agents to end their connection with the company. Letters from Robert Stuart predominate but there are also a number from Ramsey Crooks, Gabriel Franchère, Samuel Abbott, William B. Astor, and others connected at some time and in some form with this branch of the trade.
Letters written from many posts report on the conditions of the trade; those from the Menominee River to the north, from the Cacalin (Kau-kau-lin) and the Butte des Morts on the Fox River, and from Milwaukee, are most numerous. There are a number of letters from Thomas G. Anderson, British trader at Drummond Island, dating from 1815 to 1840; from Amable Grignon, trader in the Athabasca region after the war and later on the upper Wisconsin; from Laurent Fily, clerk for Augustin Grignon and from the latter's sons, Alexander and Charles A.; from Jean Baptiste Jacobs, early Green Bay schoolmaster and later a trader on the Menominee River; from Peter and William Powell, traders at many points from the St. Peter's River to the Cacalin; from Solomon Juneau, mostly after the year 1835; and lesser numbers of letters from Jean B. Beaubien, William Belcher, O.N. Bostwick, Louis Devotion, John and Michael Dousman, John Drew, George Ermatinger, John H. Kinzie, Roderick Lawrence, James H. Lockwood, Raix Robinson, F. Rocheblave, Joseph and Laurent Rollette, Lewis Rouse, Francois Roy, Henry H. Sibley, John Whelan, and many others.
There is little direct information on the Indians, although they are frequently mentioned in connection with the trade. References are made to many Indian treaties, particularly to the gathering of the Indians and the collection of goods, and in the latter part of the collection there are frequent references to annuity payments to the Menominee and the Winnebago (Ho-Chunk). Some letters of Peter B. Grignon and others in 1838 and 1839 discuss meetings of commissioners of Winnebago affairs. In the Winnebago uprising of 1827 and the Black Hawk war, Menominee Indians in the Green Bay region were collected to join the regular troops.
Brief and scattered information on the establishment of American civil and military jurisdiction in the region is found in such forms as orders concerning the liquor traffic, complaints on the curtailment of the fur trade, petitions and declarations regarding citizenship, and some social and business correspondence with officers at the forts and the Indian agents. The claiming and securing of tracts in Green Bay and upper Canada from about 1820 to 1835 by Green Bay residents is referred to, and a few letters from about the year 1835 speak of land speculation and land sales in Navarino and Milwaukee and elsewhere. Writers of a number of letters from Detroit attempt to secure Green Bay votes in territorial elections. Letters from persons not directly connected with the trade include those of James Abbott, Henry S. Baird, Nicholas G. Bean, John Biddle, Charles R. Brush, William Dickinson, James D. Doty, Alexander J. Irwin, David G. Jones, Antoine DeQuindre, Charles C. Trowbridge, Austin E. Wing, William Woodbridge, and many others.
Letters from Catholic priests to their parishioners at Green Bay, from the time of Father Samuel Mazzuchelli's first visit there in 1830 to the end of the collection, are numerous. These include letters from the Reverends Gabriel Richard, François V. Badin, Jean B. Fauvel, Theodore J. Van Den Broek, Florimond J. Bonduel, and a few from Bishop Edward Fenwick. There is a series from Richard F. Cadle of the Episcopal mission at Green Bay, a few from Daniel E. Brown of the Indian mission there, and also some few from Eleazer Williams on secular subjects. Much information on the education of Green Bay youths is available in this collection, in the prospectuses and subscription lists of the local schools and in the series of letters written home by daughters and sons of the Green Bay residents attending schools and academies in Montreal; Lowville, New York; Somerset, Ohio and elsewhere.
While most of the letters in this collection were written primarily for business reasons, there is much information on family and personal affairs contained in them. For many years there are long annual letters to Porlier from his sisters and his cousin, Xavier Malhiot of Verchères, near Montreal.
Several series of letters not properly a part of the Grignon, Lawe, or Porlier papers are filed in the collection: a group of letters, 1807-1818, to Charles Reaume dealing with his duties as justice of the peace, the war, and the trade; several letters addressed to George Boyd and some drafts of his own letters; a collection of family letters of Ebenezer Childs, including several written by him from the territorial legislature at the end of the thirties; and a number addressed to Andrew J. Vieau of Milwaukee and Two Rivers, 1836 to 1846, mainly from his father-in-law, John Lawe, concerning the trade and the operation of a saw and grist mill, but also from a number of his Milwaukee associates. Towards the end of the collection, largely after 1840, there are several letters from pioneer settlers in Fond du Lac, Oconto, Oshkosh, Poygan Lake, Peshtigo Mills, and elsewhere.
Most of the LEGAL PAPERS, 1712-1873, deal with the same general time period as the correspondence. They are chiefly legal papers preserved in the homes or offices of these three families or by early justices of the peace in Brown County -- Reaume, Porlier, Bean, Rouse, and Louis Grignon, and consist of certificates of marriage, apprentice bonds, trade licenses, trade agreements, citizenship papers, assessment rolls, poll tax lists, deeds, leases, notices of auctions, proclamations, election returns, lists of jurors, summones, subpoenas, verdicts, and other miscellaneous papers.
The VISUAL MATERIALS series consists of portraits and snapshots of the Grignon family and friends. The majority were collected by Edith Acker Grignon and her husband Rossiter Grignon, and depict relatives and events of their generation (the late 19th century and early 20th century) rather than the earlier generations documented in the papers. In 1939 Edith Grignon supplied many of the identifications. Also included are pictures of hunting in northern Wisconsin and snapshots of farming in Northern Wisconsin as well as a few snapshots from California and Nevada.
