John A. Rockwell papers

A collection of approximately 3000 items from 1770 to 1871, it consists of the personal and professional papers of John Arnold Rockwell, chiefly his incoming and outgoing correspondence. The papers document Rockwell's legal career; the development of the U.S. Court of Claims; politics; the Constitutional Union Party of 1860; land development, particularly in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan; transportation, including land grants in aid of canals and railroads such as the Illinois Central and the projected Pacific Railroads; mining; and banking. Correspondents include, among others, John William Allen, Reverdy Johnson, Charles William Rockwell, and Dixwell Lathrop, who was a member of the Rockwell Land Company and one of the founders of Rockwell Colony in La Salle, Illinois. Also included are a letter book, plats, Dixwell Lathrop's notebooks, newspaper clippings, and the 1857 legal brief in the case of the United States, appellants vs. Charles Fossatt, regarding the New Almaden Quicksilver Mines. The earliest portion of Rockwell's correspondence includes letters from his father Charles Rockwell and brother Charles William Rockwell who had moved to Savannah, Georgia in 1817 to run a shipping business. The post-1861 part of the collection consists mainly of the incoming correspondence of John A. Rockwell's youngest son Alfred Perkins Rockwell, a Yale graduate, mining engineer, Civil War veteran, and businessman. Also included is correspondence of the Perkins and Tisdale families, including Rockwell's father-in-law Joseph Perkins who died in 1832 and was a Revolutionary War soldier, a Major in the Connecticut militia, physician, and businessman; also, Simon Perkins, John Tisdale, Elkanah Tisdale, and others. This correspondence deals chiefly with the properties in Connecticut and the Western Reserve. Also present is an autograph letter signed from Millard Fillmore to John A. Rockwell, 1852 January 14 (RO 2376).