Floyd’s Journal Found

Photo: Front Cover of Charles Floyd’s journal at the Wisconsin Historical Society

Reuben Gold Thwaites is best known as the editor of “The Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition,” which was published in 1904-05 as an eight-volume set.

But Thwaites is also known as the person who found and saved the original journal of Sergeant Charles Floyd, the only member of the Corps to die during the Expedition. According to Matt Blessing, in his 2004 Marquette University report titled, “Reuben Gold Thwaites and the Historical Resurrection of Lewis and Clark,” Thwaites, then the second director of the Wisconsin Historical Society, stumbled upon Floyd’s thin, worn notebook in 1894 as he sorted through thousands of manuscripts and books bequeathed to the Society by the previous director, Lyman C. Draper.

How did Draper obtain Floyd’s journal? Blessing says it’s open to speculation. According to a letter to Thomas Jefferson from Meriwether Lewis in the spring of 1805, the sergeant’s journal was sent east on the returning keelboat. It’s believe that William Clark retained the book, or reacquired it in the years just prior to the publication of Biddle’s volumes in 1814.

Draper, being a huge admirer of George Rogers Clark, acquired a large collection of Clark family papers from John Croghan, a nephew to the Clark brothers. It’s likely the Floyd journal was mixed in with this collection. Or, Draper could have obtained the journal during one of his many collecting trips to Kentucky and Tennessee between 1843 and 1852.

Once Thwaites understood what he had, he quickly made Floyd’s 12,000-word journal available to historians. It was first published by the American Philosophical Society in the organization’s publication, “Proceedings.”

The 55-page Floyd diary, from May 14 through August 17, 1804, is a part of the Draper Manuscripts at the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison.