At the mouth of the Milwaukee River Lapham found, on his arrival on July 3, 1836, fifty houses where a few months before had been but two or three. In coming from the older settled portion of Ohio to Milwaukee he had entered a new world. Chicago was still in the height of its first mad speculative boom and conditions at Milwaukee differed only
in detail from those which prevailed at Chicago. Indeed, on reaching Detroit on his westward journey, Lapham wrote to his brother: “I am now, and have been since I arrived at Sandusky, in what might very properly be called the world of speculators: everybody you meet is engaged in some speculation; everything you hear has some speculation at the bottom. The hotel where I am now writing has suspended on the walls of the barroom plats of new towns; I have added the ninth.” No wonder the impecunious young man, engulfed in such an atmosphere, proceeded, immediately upon his arrival at Milwaukee, to purchase three town lots for $5,000, payable “one-half in one one-half in two years.” How did he expect to provide the money to meet this obligation? He did not expect to provide it; he “bought them for the purpose of selling them again at a higher price.”
Lapham, however, was never designed for a business man, and he never acquired more than a very modest competence in life. I have spoken of the speculative mania which then pervaded all the newer West merely to illustrate the sincerity of the young immigrant’s devotion to scholarship, from the pursuit of which even the thrill and intoxication of perhaps the greatest boom the country has ever witnessed could detain him only momentarily. Within two weeks of his arrival at Milwaukee he records that he has made a map of the county (possibly a professional matter) and “done a little botanizing.” Even earlier, while at Detroit en route to the West, he had taken time to write Professor Asa Gray an offer to collect for him specimens from the new region to which the writer was going. “Let me entreat you to pay particular attention to my pets, the grasses,” wrote the noted botanist in reply; “I will see that you have due credit for every interesting discovery.” Six weeks after his arrival at Milwaukee Lapham wrote to another botanical friend that he found many new plants at Milwaukee; and that “in order to inform my friends of what plants are found here and to
enable them to indicate such as they want I think of publishing a catalogue of such as I find.”
Thus was conceived the idea responsible for the first publication of a scientific character within the bounds of the present state of Wisconsin, for before the close of the year there issued from the office of Milwaukee’s newly founded newspaper a Catalogue of Plants and Shells, Found in the Vicinity of Milwaukee, on the West Side of Lake Michigan, by I. A. Lapham. It would probably be safe to affirm that this was the first scientific work to be published west of the Great Lakes, at least to the north of St. Louis. For in literary matters Chicago, whose commercial progress Milwaukee never succeeded in equalling, must yield the palm of leadership to her early North Shore rival. Leaving out of consideration one or two lyceum lectures which were printed after delivery, the earliest Chicago imprint of a scholarly character of which I have any knowledge is Mrs. Kinzie’s well-known story of the Chicago massacre, published as a pamphlet in 1844; and this, a reminiscent family narrative, does not deserve to be regarded as scholarly in the true sense of the term.
In 1838, two years after his arrival, Lapham began the collection of material for a gazeteer of Wisconsin. Published at Milwaukee in 1844, it constitutes both Wisconsin’s first book of history and the state’s first home-made book of any character to be published in more durable binding than paper. So attractive were its merits that an unscrupulous rival author, Donald McLeod, more adept at wielding the scissors than the pen, promptly and brazenly plagiarized a large portion of its contents for his History of Wiskonsan, published, appropriately enough, by “Steele’s Press” at Buffalo, in 1846: and a copy of this fraudulent publication was recently offered for sale by a dealer, with due encomiums upon its rarity and worth, for the modest sum of thirty dollars.
Thus far we have followed Lapham’s career in due chronological order. Some thirty years were yet to elapse before his death in 1875, years crowded with earnest, self-effacing labors in the cause of scholarship. In what follows I shall treat of his various scholarly interests and achievements in topical order, without regard to chronology.
Although himself self-taught Lapham’s active interest in educational institutions persisted throughout his life. In 1843 he secured the adoption by the territorial legislature of a resolution to Congress petitioning a grant of land for the purpose of establishing in Wisconsin an institution for the instruction of the deaf and dumb, and blind, and an asylum for the insane. He is the real father of the Milwaukee public high school system. In 1846 he donated thirteen acres of land lying within the city limits for the purpose of establishing the first high school. In the spring of 1848 he was commissioned by the city as its agent to secure a loan of $16,000 in the East for the building of schoolhouses, and he made the long trip to New York and Boston on this public mission. In the same year he proffered the newly authorized University of Wisconsin the gift of “a pretty extensive herbarium” of 1,000 or 1,500 species of plants. In March, 1848, by a meeting of citizens held at the council house “it was deemed expedient to establish a college in this city” and an executive committee of five townsmen was appointed with full power to consummate the desired object. Lapham was one of the five men charged with this weighty responsibility, and out of this movement proceeded the “Milwaukee Female Seminary,” which today is represented by the Milwaukee-Downer College, one of the state’s noble institutions of higher learning. In August, 1850, as president of the executive board of the college, Lapham had the satisfaction of delivering to its first two graduates their diplomas. When, in later years, he was offered a professorship in the school he declined the position, modestly explaining that his
lack of education and of teaching experience rendered him unfit to discharge the trust.
With our own State Historical Society his connection was long and honorable. Before coming to Wisconsin he had actively engaged in the work of the Ohio Historical and Philosophical Society. He hailed with joy the formation of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin in 1849 and was one of the committee of three which drafted its first constitution. The society being formally organized, he at once began to labor to promote its collections. He served as its vice-president for twelve years, and as president for ten additional years. With the Smithsonian Institution he established relations of mutual helpfulness almost immediately upon its organization. Of his relations with this and other learned institutions more will be said in connection with certain lines of investigation which he carried on.