Lyman Copeland Draper (September 4, 1815August 26, 1891) was a librarian and historian who served as secretary for the
State Historical Society of Wisconsin
The Wisconsin Historical Society (officially the State Historical Society of Wisconsin) is simultaneously a state agency and a private membership organization whose purpose is to maintain, promote and spread knowledge relating to the history of N ...
at
Madison, Wisconsin
Madison is the county seat of Dane County and the capital city of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2020 census the population was 269,840, making it the second-largest city in Wisconsin by population, after Milwaukee, and the 80th-lar ...
. Draper also served as
Superintendent of Public Instruction of Wisconsin
The Superintendent of Public Instruction, sometimes referred to as the State Superintendent of Schools, is a constitutional officer within the executive branch of the Wisconsin state government, and acts as the executive head of the Department of ...
from 1858 to 1860.
Biography
Lyman Copeland Draper was born on September 4, 1815, in
Evans, New York
Evans is a town in Erie County, New York, United States. The population was 16,356 at the 2010 census. The town derives its name from David E. Evans, an agent of the Holland Land Company and nephew of land agent Joseph Ellicott.
The town is appro ...
, a descendant of early
settler
James Draper (1618–1694). Growing up he often heard about the exploits of his grandfathers and father in the Revolution and the War of 1812. He developed a keen interest in the history of those times. Starting in the 1838, Lyman Draper corresponded with people who were early settlers in the Trans-Allegheny region during the second half of the 18th century. He also traveled extensively in the region to gain a better feel for the territory. Draper's professed purpose was to shed light on the era and gain knowledge before it was completely forgotten. He planned to write a series of biographies on early settlers in the region and document the
Indian Wars
The American Indian Wars, also known as the American Frontier Wars, and the Indian Wars, were fought by European governments and colonists in North America, and later by the United States and Canadian governments and American and Canadian settle ...
in the
Ohio River Valley
The Ohio River is a long river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing southwesterly from western Pennsylvania to its mouth on the Mississippi River at the southern tip of Illinoi ...
.
Although Draper never finished his biographies, his correspondence with survivors of the time and their relatives provide the largest single first-hand account of the settlement of the region. He published 10 volumes of historical notes for the Wisconsin Historical Society, as well as a volume about the
Battle of King's Mountain
The Battle of Kings Mountain was a military engagement between Patriot and Loyalist militias in South Carolina during the Southern Campaign of the American Revolutionary War, resulting in a decisive victory for the Patriots. The battle took pla ...
(1780). This featured many of the early settlers.
Draper was elected a member of the
American Antiquarian Society
The American Antiquarian Society (AAS), located in Worcester, Massachusetts, is both a learned society and a national research library of pre-twentieth-century American history and culture. Founded in 1812, it is the oldest historical society in ...
in 1877.
He died on August 26, 1891, in Madison, Wisconsin.
Lyman Draper Manuscript Collection
The Lyman Draper Manuscript Collection includes his extensive notes and correspondence as well as the works and papers of a number of notable early Americans, collected by Lyman Draper on the history of the trans-Allegheny West. This area includes portions of the Carolinas, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, the entire Ohio Valley, and the Mississippi Valley. Among the most notable of the figures whose papers he collected are
Joseph Brant
Thayendanegea or Joseph Brant (March 1743 – November 24, 1807) was a Mohawk people, Mohawk military and political leader, based in present-day New York (state), New York, who was closely associated with Kingdom of Great Britain, Great B ...
,
Daniel Boone
Daniel Boone (September 26, 1820) was an American pioneer and frontiersman whose exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. He became famous for his exploration and settlement of Kentucky, which was then beyond the we ...
,
George Rogers Clark
George Rogers Clark (November 19, 1752 – February 13, 1818) was an American surveyor, soldier, and militia officer from Virginia who became the highest-ranking American patriot military officer on the northwestern frontier during the Ame ...
,
Thomas S. Hinde,
John Donelson
John Donelson (1718–1785) was an American frontiersman, ironmaster, politician, city planner, and explorer. After founding and operating what became Washington Iron Furnace in Franklin County, Virginia for several years, he moved with his family ...
,
James Robertson,
General Joseph Martin, and
Simon Kenton
Simon Kenton (aka "Simon Butler") (April 3, 1755 – April 29, 1836) was an American frontiersman and soldier in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio. He was a friend of Daniel Boone, Simon Girty, Spencer Records, Thomas S. Hinde, Thomas Hinde, and ...
. Most materials cover the time period from the 1740s through the 1810s. The Draper Collection comprises nearly 500 volumes.
The State Historical Society of Wisconsin (now Wisconsin Historical Society), for which Draper served as corresponding secretary from 1854 to 1886, owns the collection of original 18th and 19th-century papers. Major research libraries around the United States have
microfilm
Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either photographic film, films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the origin ...
of the collection.
References
Further reading
*
Anderson, Rasmus Björn. ''Biographical Sketch of Lyman C. Draper, LL. D., Secretary of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin''. Cincinnati: P. G. Thomson, 1881.
* Dabney, Lucius Bryan.
A Southerner's Defense of Lyman Draper. ''The Wisconsin Magazine of History'', vol. 38, no. 3 (Spring 1955): 131-134.
* Doane, Gilbert H.
Lyman Draper, Founder of a Great Library. ''The Wisconsin Magazine of History'', vol. 37, no. 4 (Summer 1954): 207-209.
* Fowlkes, John Guy.
The Educators' Debt to Lyman Copeland Draper. ''The Wisconsin Magazine of History'', vol. 38, no. 1 (Autumn 1954): 30.
* Harper, Josephine L. ''A Guide to the Draper Manuscripts''. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1983.
*
Hesseltine, William B. and Larry Gara.
The Historical Fraternity: Correspondence of Historians Grigsby, Henry and Draper. ''The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography'', vol. 61, no. 4 (Oct 1953): 450-471.
* Hesseltine, William B.
Lyman Copeland Draper, 1815-1891. ''The Wisconsin Magazine of History'', vol. 35, no. 3 (Spring 1952): 163-166.
* Hesseltine, William B.
Lyman Draper and the South, ''Journal of Southern History'', vol. 19, no. 1 (Feb 1953): 20–31.
* Hesseltine, William B. ''Pioneer's Mission: The Story of Lyman Copeland Draper''. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1954.
*
Kellogg, Louise Phelps.
The Services and Collections of Lyman Copeland Draper. ''The Wisconsin Magazine of History'', vol. 5, no. 3 (Mar 1922): 244-263.
* Thwaites, Reuben Gold.
Lyman Copeland Draper: A Memoir. In ''Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, vol. 12'', pp. 1–22. Madison, Wis.: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1892.
* Wall, Bennett H.
In the Footsteps of Draper. ''The Wisconsin Magazine of History'', vol. 41, no. 1 (Autumn 1957): 4-7.
External links
About the Draper Manuscript Collectionat the Wisconsin Historical Society
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Draper, Lyman
1815 births
1891 deaths
Politicians from Lockport, New York
Writers from Wisconsin
19th-century American historians
Historians of the American Revolution
Historians of the United States
History of the Midwestern United States
Educators from Wisconsin
Superintendents of Public Instruction of Wisconsin
American male non-fiction writers
19th-century American politicians
19th-century American male writers
Members of the American Antiquarian Society
Historians from New York (state)
19th-century American educators