Scope and Content Note
The papers of Frederick West Lander (1821-1862) and Jean Margaret Lander span the period 1836-1894, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the years 1849-1862. F. W. Lander’s professional activities as an explorer-engineer in the West, 1853-1861, and his service as an officer in the Union Army, 1861-1862, account for the largest portion of the material. There is little documentation of his early career as a railroad construction engineer in Massachusetts or of his personal life. Some evidence of his efforts in poetry and politics is included in the collection. The papers are organized into five series: General Correspondence and Related Material , Dispatches , Letter Copybook , Miscellany , and J. M. Lander Papers .
As an explorer in the West, F. W. Lander led or took part in five expeditions to discover and survey easier and shorter routes from the interior to the Pacific coast. Notes, sketch maps, reports, and correspondence document these explorations. During these years he served as chief engineer and superintendent of the Fort Kearney, South Pass, and Honey Lake Wagon Road, a route calculated to improve on the Oregon trail as a migration path. Lander’s advocacy of a western rail system and his concern that the region be rapidly settled are manifested in correspondence with his superiors in the Department of the Interior and in draft and printed reports and memorials to Congress, manuscript and printed copies of his Emigrant Guide, and newspaper articles. Especially evident in the correspondence, particularly with subordinates, are the problems and dissensions involved in exploration under aegis of the government and the day-to-day rigors incident to life in the wilderness and conflict with the native population.
Also documented is Lander’s military career in the Civil War. As an aide-de-camp to General George Brinton McClellan (1826-1885) and as a brigadier general of volunteers under General Chas. P. Stone, Lander added to the fame he had earlier achieved, as an explorer and Indian fighter, by conspicuous bravery in military actions on the upper Potomac River. Dispatches, letters, and telegrams document in considerable detail troop movements and command decisions involved in the war in what was then western Virginia. Newspaper clippings describe Lander’s exploits.
Also documented by newspaper clippings are other aspects of Lander’s life. His political activities as a Democrat in support of John C. Breckinridge for president in California in 1860, his exertions as a publicist for railroad building endeavors, and his involvement in personal and professional quarrels were widely reported in the press. One such quarrel, an affair of honor involving congressmen Roger A. Pryor of Virginia and John Fox Potter of Wisconsin in which Lander acted as a second is detailed in a sequence of letters from April 1860 in the General Correspondence and Related Material series and in the scrapbooks and newspaper clippings in the Miscellany.
F. W. Lander’s correspondents include Jefferson Davis, John B. Floyd, John W. Garrett, George Brinton McClellan (1826-1885), William S. Rosecrans, and Winfield Scott. There are copies of letters from Lander to Simon Cameron, Moses Kelly, Joseph Lane, J. A. McDougall, George Brinton McClellan, Lansing Stout, and others.
The papers of J. M. Lander consist of correspondence, scrapbooks of newspaper clippings, and miscellaneous items relating to her career as an actress. Her renown during a forty-year career is attested to by clippings of reviews from European, North American, and Caribbean newspapers. The correspondence reflects her acquaintance in political, social, and artistic circles. Included are letters from Alexander Graham Bell, Edwin Booth, Dion Boucicault, Henry Clay, Millard Fillmore, John Hay, Joseph Jefferson, Harriet Lane, T. W. Keene, Julia Marlowe, Charles Reade, Whitelaw Reid, Anna Cora Ogden Mowatt Ritchie, and a letter of introduction to George Sand.