Search

The Lucius Lyon papers contain the public correspondence of Lucius Lyon, United States representative and senator from Michigan, and surveyor general for Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. Letter writers include Michigan governors, legislators, postmasters, physicians, and other local politicians, as well as residents of Michigan, Wisconsin, northern Illinois, and Indiana, and national Democratic Party leaders during the years Lyon served in Congress. In addition to this finding aid, the Clements Library has created a List of Contributors.

The Lucius Lyon papers (12 linear feet) contain the public and private correspondence of Lucius Lyon, United States representative and senator from Michigan, and surveyor general for Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. Lyon received letters from southern Michigan governors and legislators, as well as postmasters, physicians, and other local politicians. Other contributors include residents of Michigan, Wisconsin, northern Illinois, and Indiana; easterners interested in land speculation, settlement, and Michigan politics; and national Democratic Party leaders during the years Lyon served in Congress.

The Correspondence Series comprises the bulk of the Lyon papers. Topics discussed in the Chronological Correspondence Subseries include Michigan statehood, Wisconsin statehood, Indian relations, government appointments, and local politics. Also included are numerous proposals and requests to the United States government for investments and improvements for harbors, lighthouses, roads and mail routes, safety, and protection on the Great Lakes. As well as letters from government officials, Lyon received letters from citizens of virtually every county in Michigan. Several of these letters relate to pension or bounty lands owed to Revolutionary War and War of 1812 veterans and their families (e.g. January 13, 1834; December 8, 1834; January 24, 1835; March 22, 1838; January 3, 1844; November 30, 1844). Letters written during and following the boundary dispute over Toledo provide an on-the-ground view of how residents of the region experienced the conflict and its subsequent effects. A letter written April 9, 1835, accuses the Toledo Postmaster of designating his office as being in Ohio, which was seen as "having taken an improper part in the controversy now pending, between that State & Michigan Territory, which has created much excitement & dissatisfaction among the people." Though the bulk of the letters are official in nature, the collection also contains personal letters to and from Addison, Anna, Asa, Daniel, Edward, Enos, Ira, Lucretia, Mary, Orson, Sarah Atwater, Truman H., and Worthington S. Lyon. Notably, Lucretia Lyon wrote 111 letters to her brother Lucius between 1827 and 1850.

As a Michigan official and surveyor, Lyon dealt regularly with matters concerning Native Americans and their interactions with settlers and the United States government. Much of this material concerns treaties, such as the 1833 Treaty of Chicago and the 1837 Treaty of St. Peters, as well as claims made by and against Native Americans (see for example August 3, 1838; September 24, 1838; December 28, 1838; and an undated letter signed by [Musk]Rat's Liver, also known as Wazhashkokon). Tribes involved include the Choctaw, Fox, Oneida, Potawatomi, Sac (Sauk), Lakota/Dakota, Saganaw, and Ho-Chunk. Also discussed is the Shawnee Prophet (September 2, 1834) and payments to white doctors who vaccinated the Indians against smallpox (March 8, May, 30, and June 12, 1834). Several letters relate to the Second Seminole War and reference Thomas Jesup, Winfield Scott, and Sam Jones (July 26, 1836; February 8, 1838; March 25, 1838; and April 23, 1838).

Lyon also received 14 anonymous love letters (including one undated Valentine housed in the Miscellaneous series) in 1849 and 1850 signed “Mignonette.” One of these letters by the fellow Swedenborgian admirer is signed L.A. Northup whose possible identity could be Laura Adeline Northrup, daughter of a local blacksmith that Lyon visited at least once. A typescript copy of Lyon’s final reply to this woman indicates that she was much younger than him and that he would prefer to remain friends.

The Typed Copies Subseries contains 32 typed transcripts of letters to and from Lucius Lyon and members of the Ingersoll family not present in original format in collection. Some copies note the location of originals at the time they were made. Original letters date from 1833 to 1850 as well as undated.

The Caroline Portman Campbell and James H. Campbell Correspondence Subseries consists of letters relating to Caroline Belzora Portman Campbell, who donated the Lyon Papers to the University of Michigan, and her husband, James H. Campbell, a lawyer in the Grand Rapids area. Campbell (1859-1926) was active in civic and historical organizations including those related to the history of the state of Michigan. The earliest piece of correspondence is a June 30, 1770, letter written by a Quaker woman, Hannah Jackson, which was previously in the possession of Caroline Portman Campbell’s stepmother, Jennie A. Baley Portman. There is also a January 21, 1849, letter written by Portman Campbell’s great-grandmother, Elizabeth Latham, and great-uncle. Other material relates to James H. Campbell's law practice and Caroline Campbell's historical research as well as ownership and donation of the Lucius Lyon papers to the University of Michigan. The bulk of the material is from 1884-1924.

The Native American Treaty Documents Series contains material primarily related to the 1837 Treaty of St Peters (alternatively known as the Treaty with the Chippewa or White Pine Treaty) as well as additional papers related to other contemporary treaties with Native American tribes in the Midwest. The 1837 Treaty Claims Subseries contains the 189 numbered claims and various un-numbered claims submitted by the Ojibwa who ceded a large plot of land in present-day Minnesota and Wisconsin to the United States in the Treaty of St. Peters (Treaty with the Chippewa or the White Pine Treaty) on July 29, 1837. There are two types of claims for financial compensation per the treaty stipulations. The first type of claims, the Article 3 Claims Sub-subseries, are those made by members of the tribe who were of mixed European and Native American ancestry. The second, the Article 4 Claims Sub-subseries, are claims made by those owed money by the Ojibwa. Also present are powers of attorney for claimants, lists of names of claimants, and other related documentation in the Other Treaty Documents Subseries.

• Manuscript account of Jonathan Kearsley's military service during the War of 1812.

  Written in Lucius Lyon's hand. Kearsley described his job removing dead bodies from the battlegrounds and recounted the death of Major Ludowick Morgan near Lake Erie.

• Lucius Lyon memo book, 1830-1843
• Lucius Lyon notebook, 1838
• Lucius Lyon memo book, 1842-1843
• Oraculum (manuscript fortunetelling book)
• Berrien County, Michigan, notebook
• "Diagram of Salt Wells Sunk at the Rapids of Grand River, Michigan"
• Lucretia Lyon receipt book

  Lurectia Lyon's receipt book includes recipes for biscuits, cookies, gingerbread, and cakes (palate cake, diet cake, perpetual cake) and household goods such as nankeen dye, food preserves, and cures for cholera morbus, deafness, warts and corns, poisonous vine infections, and dysentery.

• Account notebook, April 1850-February 1851
• Eliza Smith / Pamelia Thayer account book, 1835-1849
• Isaac Bronson Account Book

The Land, Legal, Business, and Financial Papers Series contains documents related to Lyon's business interests spanning 1820 through his death in 1851, along with papers relating to his family's finances after his death. Included are legal documents involving Lyon or officiated by him (these are largely from Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin) as well as Lyon's personal and professional financial records, including receipts, bills, invoices, and account lists (1820s-1840s). An early document is an account of sundries taken by the British and allies after surrender of Detroit on October 16, 1812. The collection includes two maps: a printed Wisconsin Territory map by David H. Burr of the U.S. House of Representatives (1836) and a manuscript map showing nine towns of Jackson County and three of Calhoun County, Michigan, with some of the leading roads, ca. 1830. The series is organized into a Chronological Subseries, Financial Bundles Subseries, a Petitions Subseries, and Maps subseries.

The Pamphlets, Government Documents, Blank Forms, Broadsides, Newspapers, Ephemera, and Other Printed Items Series contains printed legal and legislative documents, advertisements and regulations, invitations, and blank forms, among other items. It also includes newspaper pages and clippings dating from 1833 to 1937. Please see the box and folder listing of this finding aid for a complete list of the items in this series.

The Miscellaneous Series contains various items, including Lyon's commissions as a Regent of the University of Michigan and Surveyor General of Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan; undated caucus ballots; a 1905 typed biographical sketch of Lewis Cass, and more.

• A description of the village of Lyons
• The charter of the Illinois and Michigan Canal & Railroad Company
• List of officers employed in the Quarter Masters Department
• Proceedings relative to the admission of the State of Tennesse into the Union
• An undated Knigts of Templar address
• Various receipes
• A Valentine sent in 1850
• Knitting directions

In addition to this finding aid, the Clements Library has created a List of Contributors for the Lucius Lyon papers. For more information on contributors see the Clements Library card catalog.

The Norton Strange Townshend Family papers include correspondence, diaries, essays, lectures, printed matter, clippings, financial and legal papers, photographs, daguerreotypes, ephemera, realia, maps, and books belonging to the Townshend and Dodge families, who were connected by the marriage of Margaret Wing (granddaughter of Norton Townshend) and Homer Levi Dodge (grandson of Levi Dodge) in 1917. Much of the collection documents the life and career of politician and agricultural educator Norton Strange Townshend, including his political, educational, and social reform activities.

The Norton Strange Townshend Family Papers consist of 20.5 linear feet of manuscripts, 66 cased photographs, 3 linear feet of paper photographs, 8 cubic feet of photographic slides, and 7 cubic feet of realia, arranged into 13 series. For more detail, see scope and content notes, below.

The Correspondence series (Boxes 1-10) contains all the collection’s letters, postcards, and telegrams (with the exception of official military correspondence, financial correspondence, and genealogy correspondence, which are under "Topical Files," "Financial Correspondence," and "Genealogical Correspondence," respectively). Correspondence spans the years 1827-1989 and makes up around one quarter of the collection. It is subdivided by family into the "Townshend Subseries" and "Dodge Subseries," and arranged chronologically, with undated items at the end. The series contains correspondence to and from prominent Ohio politicians, such as Salmon P. Chase; who wrote 34 letters to Townshend; William Medill; Rutherford B. Hayes; and notable agricultural educators, including James Sullivant and John Klippart. Correspondence among family members is also voluminous, and documents a wide variety of issues during the mid-19th to early-20th centuries, including social and family life, courtship, women’s work and viewpoints, travel, and attitudes toward education. For an index of correspondents, see "Additional Descriptive Data."

The Joel Townshend papers series (Box 10) brings together documents by and related to Norton Townshend’s father, Joel Townshend (1780-1864). It includes a few religious writings, as well as financial and legal documents that shed light on the family’s life in Northamptonshire, England, and Ohio. Most items date from 1810 to 1830, with the exception of a biography of Townshend written in the 1930s or 1940s by his great-grandson, H. Percy Boynton.

The Norton S. Townshend papers series (Boxes 10-26) is the largest series in the collection and contains diaries, published and unpublished writings, printed materials, clippings, broadsides, biographical materials, and other items relating to nearly every facet of Townshend’s adult life. These materials document Townshend’s political involvement, particularly in local and national antislavery, in agricultural movements, and in the U.S. House of Representatives. The series also includes papers about his educational career, family life, Civil War service, and religious views and work. Townshend frequently worked and reworked his ideas on paper, and both his published and unpublished writings are a rich source of intellectual and reform history. Townshend was also an inveterate collector and preserver of interesting items, including materials relating to northern Ohio’s Liberty Party, his admission tickets to medical courses and the World Anti-Slavery Convention, an application to the Ohio State Asylum for the Education of Idiotic and Imbecile Youth, of which he was a trustee, and dozens of fliers and handbills for lectures given by himself and others.

The Margaret Bailey Townshend papers series (Boxes 26-27) is comprised of two diaries, a rich autobiographical writing entitled "Genealogy," describing her childhood and education, a small number of clippings, and materials relating to her education and career as a teacher in Illinois and Ohio in the 1850s. Many items in the Realia series (below) also relate to Margaret Bailey Townshend.

The Other Townshend family members’ papers series (Boxes 28-30) contains materials relating mainly to Townshend’s children and their spouses, but also includes James B. Wood (Townshend’s father-in-law), Harriet Wood Townshend (Townshend’s first wife), Margaret Wing Dodge (Townshend’s granddaughter), and several other relatives. The bulk of this series is made up of their writings, which are autobiographical, religious, and cultural in subject. Also of interest is biographical information on family members, including articles on Townshend’s children, who were early students of Ohio State University, and a number of obituaries of these family members.

The Dodge family papers series (Boxes 30-34) consists of materials produced and collected by the Dodges of upstate New York, from 1839 to approximately 1970, and documenting their family life, travels, hobbies (in particular the outdoors and canoeing), financial and legal transactions, and civic engagement. Incorporated are some writings by various family members, including Levi R. Dodge, F. Isabella (Donaghue) Dodge, Homer Dodge, and family friend Lydia Sayer Hasbrouck; topical files, the bulk of which are 20th century; biographical materials such as obituaries and clippings; and periodicals on topics of interest to the Dodges.

The Genealogical research series (Boxes 35-37) reflects the family’s interest in its own history and consists of correspondence, family trees, historical essays, as well as commercially produced family histories for some lines. The materials reflect a particular interest in finding links between various family members and such prominent figures as the Townshends of Raynham Hall, the Green family of Vermont, and General Grenville Dodge. This series pertains mainly to the 20th century and is arranged by family, except for the correspondence, which is arranged chronologically.

The Collection-related materials series is made up of documents and articles that shed light on the outreach efforts made on behalf of the collection, particularly for the Easterly items, prior to their accessioning by the William L. Clements Library. The series is comprised of fliers, museum publicity materials, and articles on exhibits. Materials date from the late 20th century, particularly the 1990s.

The Books series contains three items that are housed with the collection: Sermons on Various Subjects by the Late Rev. Thomas Strange, Kilsby, Northamptonshire, with Some Memoirs of His Life (1807); the Townshend Family Bible (with manuscript notes on births, deaths and marriages); and Robert W. McCormick’s 1988 self-published biography of Townshend: Norton S. Townshend, M.D. Antislavery Politician and Agricultural Educator. The rest of the books, including books from the personal libraries of Norton Townshend, Joel Townshend, Margaret Bailey Townshend, and the Dodge family, are housed in the Book Division of the Clements Library; for the list of titles, search for "M-3437" in the University of Michigan's library catalog.

The Visual materials series is arranged by type of item and then by subject. This includes daguerreotypes by prominent daguerreotypist Thomas M. Easterly, other photographs, drawings/prints, and maps. The materials range from the 1840s to the 1970s. See also Realia series below.

The Realia series contains approximately 8 linear feet of objects, including items from the childhood and teaching career of Margaret Bailey Townshend, intricate hairwork jewelry and a hair wreath made with the locks of at least 16 family members, geological materials and fossils collected by Norton Townshend and possibly Thomas Easterly, and other three-dimensional objects such as a glass vial for medicine, ribbons from the Ohio State Fair, and decorative objects. Also noteworthy are a number of paper objects, such as Civil War era chromolithograph animal toys, a Japanese paper lantern, and an alphabet game for children.

The Dodge Photographic Slides series includes eight cubic feet of photographic slides, totaling approximately 22,000 slides, attributed to Homer L. Dodge. They document travels around the southwest United States and to countries such as Japan, Canada and Sweden.

The Miscellaneous series contains envelopes without accompanying letters, blank letterhead, and a binder of transcriptions of select letters from Harriet Wood Townshend to Sarah Wood Keffer.