Guide to finding your ancestors in the Draper Manuscript Collection
Calendars
The State Historical Society of Wisconsin published several volumes of indexes to parts of the Draper Manuscript Collection. Called the “Calendar Series,” they take their name from the chronological order of the abstracts in the front of the book. An index of the principal names (of people or locations) follows to help the researcher. It does not appear that every name listed in the papers appears in the index, but instead only the key names relative to the documents.
Calendars exist for:
Series J George Rogers Clark Papers
Series U Frontier Wars Papers
Series CC Kentucky Papers
Series DD Kings Mountain Papers
Series QQ William Preston Papers
Series SS David Shepherd Papers
Series TT South Carolina Papers
Series UU South Carolina in the Revolution Miscellanies
Series VV Thomas Sumter Papers
Series XX Tennessee Papers
Series ZZ Virginia Papers
To use the calendars, begin by searching the volume indexes. The page number in the index will refer you to the page number in the book for the name or event. Go to that page to read the abstract and find the citation in the manuscript indicating the series, volume, and page number where the item can be found.