America’s 250th anniversary is approaching. That’s why curators and archivists at the Wisconsin Historical Society are highlighting its Revolutionary-era relics.
The collection includes: Native American brooches that signified prosperity, a powder horn with carved drawings of the war and soldiers’ diaries detailing America’s fight for independence.
How did these items end up at the historical society in Madison? Many can be traced back to one man: Lyman Draper.
Draper was born in New York in 1815. He grew up hearing stories of the Revolutionary War from his father and grandfather. As an adult, Draper would go on to research that history.
He interviewed direct descendants of Revolutionary War soldiers and collected hundreds of thousands of pages of handwritten material. Draper began working at the Wisconsin Historical Society in 1852 and became its longtime director. He remained in Madison for the rest of his life.
Today, Lee Grady is the historical society’s senior reference archivist. Grady shares why Madison is home to Draper’s collection.
"At the same time that he's building our own collections, he still has his own personal research stuff," says Grady. "He built a vault on the back of his house and had it stored in there. When he died, it was willed to us in the 1890s."
Lisa Saywell is the director of public services for library archives. She points to a soldier’s diary. It belonged to Joab Daggett, a carpenter and wheelwright, whose first day serving in the war was Jan. 1, 1776. Daggett recorded a journal entry while in New York on July 9. Saywell describes it.
"To encourage the troops, Washington goes out and reads the Declaration of Independence to them," says Saywell. "This is what Joab says on that day: 'We hear that Congress declared the 13 United States of America free and independent. The same was read to the regimen and a huzzah began at the camps and went through the same.'"
In a journal entry later that day, Daggett wrote that soldiers destroyed a statue of King George III and created musket balls from it.
Archivist Grady says reading these soldiers’ journals, and Draper’s manuscripts, is like traveling back in time. But because Draper idolized the generals and historical figures so much, he sometimes missed opportunities to explore untold perspectives.
"I think the primary thing is he's a person of his time," Grady says. "So what he's interested in is Revolutionary War battles, like in these heroes that he had. We have a little different view of some of what those people did."
Grady adds that Draper did interview Indigenous and formerly enslaved people, "but he was not asking them about their experiences per se — he was asking them, what did this general do at this battle?"
Today, Jackie Pozza Reisner helps fill those gaps. She’s the Wisconsin Historical Society’s curator of American Indian Collections. Reisner shows me a sash made around 1800 by Therese Marcot Schindler.
The finger-woven sash has a red, white and black pattern. Reisner describes more about its maker.
"She was a Métis individual living here in this region," says Resiner. "By Métis, we mean part French, part Native. She’s part Odawa."
Schindler’s mother was the daughter of an Odawa leader. Her father, a French trader.
"Together they build a trading enterprise," Reisner says. "So her father could bring in European goods, and her mother had these social, political, economic networks here to move those goods and to exchange them for furs and other local goods for the European market."
Reisner explains why she chose these items to highlight America’s 250th anniversary.
"I feel like Therese Marcot really illustrates what life was like here," she says. "That a lot of people might not know that there were really diverse communities here, that there were women who were running their own business here at that time."
While there isn’t an exhibition for the public to see these artifacts, people are invited to visit the historical society in Madison and ask to see certain items. Many of these pieces will be on display when the future Wisconsin History Center opens in 2027.
