SAMUEL HARRISON:

The Jonathan Carver heirs claimed after his death that the Dakota Indians had granted Carver a tract of some four million acres of land on the east side of the Mississippi River running from St. Paul to the mouth of Wisconsin's Chippewa River and to points east. A grant document or deed signed by chiefs Hawnopawjatin and Otohtongoomlisheaw of the Naudowissee band of Dakota Indians at Carver's Cave at present-day St. Paul on May 1, 1767, is said to have subsequently disappeared. Some scholars question whether or not such a document ever existed, and whether or not there was in fact a land grant to Jonathan Carver, inasmuch as he never mentions it in his Travels through the Interior Parts of North America (1778) nor in his other surviving writings.

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The collection consists primarily of letters, most of them sent by Samuel Peters, an Anglican clergyman in Connecticut with Loyalist sympathies, to Samuel Harrison, relating to the claim of the heirs of Jonathan Carver to the Carver land grant; letters from S. R. Holt, Worthington, Ohio, relating to the discovery in Ross County, Ohio, of a copy of the deed granted Jonathan Carver by the Dakota chiefs; and miscellaneous papers. There is information about efforts to locate the original deed, deeds granted to others by Jonathan Carver and his heirs, the expenses of the Carver heirs in putting petitions before Congress in an attempt to get the Carver Grant confirmed by that body, machinations against the Carver heirs, and plans for expeditions to meet the Dakota Indians on behalf of the Carver claim. One of the letters suggests that Samuel Peters and Samuel Harrison were cousins.

Later materials include letters from Philadelphia attorney James B. Laux to Henry C. Harrison concerning Carver grant lands that were subsequently deeded by the Carver heirs to Samuel Peters and by him to John Polhemus McCarr and his wife, and letters from S. R. Holt of Worthington, Ohio, concerning the discovery in that state of a transcription of the 1767 Carver Grant deed.

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Access Restrictions:

Access to and use of reserve materials requires the curator;s permission.

Preferred Citation:

[Indicate the cited item and/or series here]. Harrison, Samuel. Samuel Harrison papers relating to the Carver land grant. Minnesota Historical Society.

See the Chicago Manual of Style for additional examples.

Accession Information:

Accession number: 7337

Processing Information:

Processing and cataloging of this collection was supported with a Basic Project grant awarded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).

Catalog ID number: 990074800340104294

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This collection is indexed under the following headings in the catalog of the Minnesota Historical Society. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons or places should search the catalog using these headings.

Topics:

Carver Grant.

Land grants -- Mississippi River Valley.

Land speculation -- Mississippi River Valley.

Persons:

Carver, Jonathan, 1710-1780.

Holt, S. R.

Laux, James B.

Peters, Samuel, 1735-1826.

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