Guide to the Draper Manuscripts

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Josephine L. Harper

An invaluable guide and finding aid for one of the Wisconsin Historical Society’s most significant manuscript collections.

492 pages, 6 x 9, 9 b&w photos
Paperback: $50.00 | ISBN: 978-0-87020-352-7
Ebook: $19.99 | ISBN: 978-0-87020-683-2
Publication Date: 3/1/2004

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Front cover of Guide to the Draper Manuscripts

Description

Though more than a century has passed since the Wisconsin Historical Society's first director, Lyman C. Draper, browsed among his cherished manuscripts and notes on the western frontier, the resources he gathered remains the Society's most noted and widely recognized manuscript collection. Comprising nearly five hundred volumes of records—including military and government records, interviews, Draper's own research notes, and rare personal letters—the collection offers a wealth of information on the social, economic, and cultural conditions our frontier forebears experienced.

Among the outstanding materials that Draper secured for future generations are the Daniel Boone papers, including Draper's own interviews with Boone's son, and the Revolutionary War hero George Rogers Clark. These two collections alone are of vast significance to frontier history prior to 1830, but scholars, genealogists, and family historians will find a wealth of useful and insightful sources. This guide offers a general finding aid for the treasures within.