Historiography: Lyman Draper and the Draper Collection

People of the early frontier, Settlers and educated Natives alike had a keen sense of posterity and kept a paper trail.  Letters, diaries, logs, deeds, legal documents or even interviews with relatives who thought their lives worth record.  However, there was often no way to preserve these priceless written records. 

Enter Lyman Draper, 1815-1891.  Draper was a descendant of the Mayflower and Massachusetts veterans of the Revolutionary War.  He was lucky to be both someone who loved history and a professional historian.  Born in Lockport, New York, his family migrated to Wisconsin, where he became Superintendent of Public Instruction as well as President of the state historical society.  He developed a keen interest in the early settlement of the Ohio Valley and the Appalachian Mountains.  Beginning in the 1830's, he open correspondence with people who had been alive during those times or their relatives and descendants.  His plan was to write a history of the Ohio Valley, including the Native-Settler wars that had taken place there.  Nor was he biased.  He acquired as much information about Native leaders such as Joseph Brant of the Mohawk, who were considered "villains" in conventional histories of the day.  He also corresponded with Simon Girty's sons and, through them, with Girty's widow Catherine. 

Draper kept meticulous notes in his capacity as President of the Historical Society, producing 10 volumes of them throughout his tenure.  Though his book about the Ohio Valley never saw the light of day, he did write a book about the Revolutionary War battle of Kings Mountain, October, 1780, which featured the Overmountain Men such as John Sevier.  In time, Draper was trusted enough by descendants and family members that he acquired the letters and other documents actually written by such men as Joseph Brant, George Rogers Clark, Simon Kenton, Daniel Boone, Lewis Wetzel, Josiah Harmer, William Henry Harrison, and Daniel Brodhead.  He also gathered information about Native leaders such as Tecumseh.  These precious paper trails reside in the Lyman Draper Manuscript Collection of Wisconsin's State Historical Society and cover over 500 volumes.  Some repositories are available online but only to credentialed scholars.  Snippets and abstracts of various information from the Collection can be accessed by a lot of hunting around on the Internet, a lot of hunting around!