Scope and Content Note
The papers of Lewis Muhlenberg Haupt (1844-1937) span the years, 1849-1923, with the bulk of the items dating from 1892 to 1903. A majority of the collection concerns Haupt’s work for the Nicaraguan Canal Commission and the Isthmian Canal Commission and his attempts to secure the Nicaraguan Canal. The papers are in English and are organized into the following series: Family Papers , Correspondence , Records of the Nicaraguan and the Isthmian Canal Commissions , and Miscellany .
The Correspondence deals exclusively with the canal question. Haupt was an advocate of the Nicaraguan route rather than the Panamanian, and lobbied for the former. Correspondence about his lobbying efforts are found in his letters to Senator John Tyler Morgan, the Senate advocate of the Nicaraguan route, and Theodore C. Search, president of the National Association of Manufacturers. The letters are arranged chronologically with an indexed letterbook for 1900 at the end of the correspondence.
The Records of the Nicaraguan and the Isthmian Canal Commissions contain minutes of commission meetings; internal memoranda; questionnaires; memorials sent to the commission; working papers; drawings and charts; newspaper clippings; congressional hearings, speeches, and proposed bills; and reports submitted to and prepared by the commission, including Preliminary Report of the Isthmian Canal Commission and drafts of the final report. The working papers consist of articles and statistical and climatological data on Central America; information on sizes, drafts, and weights of ships; and shipping rates. The internal memoranda are conjectural papers written for the commission by its members on the cost of building the canal, projected income and profits, and expected usage. The drawings and charts contain Haupt’s projection of the Nicaraguan route and a map of the route printed in a contemporary journal.
The Miscellany file includes speeches and articles by Haupt supporting the canal route through Nicaragua and advertisements for his classes at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.
The Family Papers consist of typescripts of letters written by Haupt's father, Herman Haupt, between July 1861 and September 1862, a letterbook of Herman Haupt’s correspondence from November 1862 to August 1863, and a letter from Haupt to his son Lewis M. Haupt in September 1863. These letters contain a large amount of family correspondence as well as official correspondence concerning Herman Haupt’s duties as chief of construction and operation of the United States Bureau of Military Railroads during the Civil War.