Guide to the Elisha Camp Papers,
1756-1879

Postmaster, militia officer, lawyer, deputy New York State district attorney, politician, newspaper owner and editor, banker, landowner, and land agent.

Correspondence, accounts, contracts, leases, surveys, bonds, deeds, receipts, and other land, legal, and business papers, political broadsides and pamphlets pertaining to the early history of Jefferson County, New York, particularly on the township of Hounsfield, on the transfer of land from intermediate investors to actual settlers, on the attempts to make Sackets Harbor a great commercial center, and on the accompanying economic, political, and social developments. Collection is chiefly concerned with Camp, who served as representative of his brother-in-law Augustus Sacket, and for other absentee landowners such as David A. Ogden, Thomas L. Ogden, Peter Kemble, Ezra Hounsfield, Lemuel Storrs, Henry Champion, Herman LeRoy, William Bayard, James M. Ellis, Cornelius Ray, Michael Hogan, James Le Ray Chaumont, the executors of the Nicholas Olive estate and the executors of Nicholas Gouvernor. Papers after 1845 are chiefly family letters between Camp and his children and Elisha E. Camp who was in Mexico (1847), Green Bay, Wisconsin, Washington Territory, and Oregon, and a series of Civil War letters. Names of persons and firms represented include David Boyd, President James Buchanan, DeWitt Clinton, James C. Duane, George Hale, L. Seymour, Gerrit Smith, Jesse C. Smith, Charles Smyth, Joseph C. Yates, the Jefferson County Agricultural Society, Jefferson County Bank, Lake Ontario Steamboat Co., Ogden Land Co., and the Sackets Harbor and Ellisburgh Railroad.

Other topics include the Sackets Harbor and Saratoga Railroad, Sackets Harbor Steam and Ferry Boat Co., Union Academy, and the Watertown and Rome Railroad. Also, handbills, editorials, and speeches concerning National Republican Party politics on the New York State and local levels, and containing uncomplimentary references to the Bucktail faction. Other papers pertain to the militia system, the United States Navy, restrictive fees on Lake Ontario commerce, and water rights at Brownville, New York.

Detailed list available in accession folder.