Jonathan Carver (April 13, 1710 – January 31, 1780) was an American explorer and writer. He was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts and then moved with his family to Canterbury, Connecticut. He later married Abigail Robbins and became a shoemaker. He is believed to have had seven children.
In 1755 Carver joined the colonial militia at the start of the French and Indian War. During the war he studied surveying and mapping techniques. He was successful in the military and eventually became captain of a Massachusetts regiment in 1761. Two years later he quit the army with a determination to explore the new territories acquired by the British as a result of the war.
Initially Carver was unable to find a sponsor for his proposed explorations but in 1766, Robert Rogers contracted Carver to lead an expedition to find a western water route to the Pacific Ocean, the Northwest Passage. There was a great incentive to discover this route. The king and Parliament had promised a vast prize in gold for any such discovery. The eastern route to the Pacific was around the Cape of Good Hope. That route was both lengthy and contested by competing European powers.
Carver, Minnesota and Carver County, Minnesota were named in honor of Jonathan Carver for his exploration and mapping of the region.
Contents |
Carver left Fort Michilimackinac at present-day Mackinaw City, MI in the spring of 1766. Taking large fur-trading canoes, he traveled the well-utilized trade routes of the French. His route took him along the northern coast of Lake Michigan, cut across to what is now the Door County peninsula in Wisconsin and proceeded along the western edge of the bay until reaching what is now Green Bay, Wisconsin.
There was a small French settlement at the foot of Green Bay (Lake Michigan), as well as a French monastery nearby De Pere, Wisconsin. Carver resupplied here and then continued. He traveled up the Fox River to the Winnebego Indian village at the north end of Lake Winnebago at the site of the present city of Appleton, Wisconsin. Continuing up the Fox River he eventually arrived at the "Grand Portage" a well used portage between the Fox River and the Wisconsin River. This was a major fur trade location because from here (now Portage, Wisconsin) furs could proceed from the Great Lakes to the Wisconsin River, hence to the Mississippi and New Orleans.
Carver crossed to the Wisconsin River and then traveled down the Mississippi emerging at the great trade encampment at Prairie du Chien. Rather than turn south towards New Orleans, his expedition turned north into what is now Minnesota. By the late summer he had reached the Saint Anthony Falls at what is now Minneapolis. He spent some time with the tribe near the falls but turned south, down the Mississippi to find a more suitable place to spend the winter. During this portion of the trip he discovered Carver's Cave.
He spent the winter in a tribal village in what is now eastern Iowa. The next spring he encountered James Tute and James Stanley Goddard, who had been sent to accompany Carver on his journey. They continued exploring and mapping up the Mississippi River through what is now Minnesota, and Wisconsin. They then headed for Grand Portage on Lake Superior, hoping that Rogers had sent supplies there for them. However, instead of supplies they found a letter from him chiding them for having spent as much money as they already had and warning them to be more thrifty in the future. Unable to proceed without the badly-needed supplies, they headed back to Fort Michilimackinac, arriving there on August 29, 1767.
He found that his sponsor Royal Governor Robert Rogers was under suspicion of plotting treason against England. On December 6, 1767, Rogers was arrested, charged with treason, placed in irons and put in solitary confinement. While he spent a miserable winter in an unheated guardhouse, Carver probably spent time preparing his journal of the expedition for publication. In the spring of 1768 the first ship of the season took Carver and Rogers both to Detroit. Carver travelled in the relative comfort of a passenger cabin, while Rogers was forced to sit out the journey seated upon the ballast rocks in the hold of the ship. Rogers was taken to Montreal to be court-martialed, and although he was found not guilty of the charges against him, he was not returned to his position as Royal Governor. Carver submitted a list of expenses to his superiors, but payment was denied on the grounds that Rogers had not had sufficient authority to order such an expedition to take place.
Carver was outraged. He believed that he had been legitimately hired by the Crown to map and explore the newly acquired territory. He believed that he had possibly identified a Northwest Passage. He had spent two years working and now had little to show for it but maps and log books. No one seemed interested. In 1769 Carver left for England to petition the government for his promised payment and for a reward for identifying a potential Northwest Passage.
He left his wife Abigail in the colonies and never saw her again. He spent the remainder of his life petitioning the government for his payments. He did in fact ultimately get two separate grants from the crown, although not the great reward for identifying a Northwest Passage. While working at this lobbying endeavor he wrote his Travels... book, and started a second family in London.
Carver's book was an immediate success when first published in 1778, and a second London edition followed the next year; over thirty editions and versions have been published since in several languages. A very important book in the history of the exploration of the American West as Carver was the first English-speaking explorer to venture west of the upper Mississippi River. He anticipated the idea of a continental divide as he was the first to mention a large mountain range to the west (presumably the Rocky Mountains) that blocks the westward passage and serves as a continental divide. Further, the name 'Oregon' appears in print here for the first time, both in the text, and on one of the maps. Carver penetrated farther into the West than any other English explorer before the Revolution and stimulated curiosity concerning routes to the Pacific, later satisfied by Mackenzie and Lewis and Clark. The book proved and remained immensely popular. The profits did not come soon enough for him, however. He died in poverty on January 31, 1780 in London.
In the 20th century, the reliability of Carver's narrative has been debated by scholars; examination of Carver's manuscript journal establishes that it differs in important respects from the published version. More recent research points to the conclusion that while Carver actually made the tour he describes, he suppressed the fact that he performed it as a hired agent of Royal GovernorMajor Robert Rogers , rather than on his own responsibility.
E.G. Bourne, in a 1906 essay published in the American Historical Review, summarized his view of Carver's book: "Scholars are in general agreement that much of the work in this volume is an abridgement or adaptation of historical writings by Charlevoix, Adair, and La Hontan. Entire chapters read as near verbatim text from one or more of these other authors." [1]
After Carver's death, the editor of the third edition of his book claimed that he had in his possession a deed, signed by two chiefs of the Sioux, giving Carver title to about 10,000 square miles in what is now Wisconsin and Minnesota. The deed could not be located after the death of Carver's London widow.
In 1804, a group of descendants of Carver petitioned the U.S. Congress for ownership rights to a large tract of land in Wisconsin and Minnesota, claiming that the deed supposedly dated at the "Great Cave, May the 1st, 1767" entitled Carver and his family to over 10,000 square miles of land. Specifically they identified; "the whole of a certain tract or territory of land, bounded as follows, viz.: from the Falls of St. Anthony, running on the east bank of the Mississippi, nearly southeast, as far as Lake Pepin, where the Chippewa joins the Mississippi, and from thence eastward, five days travel, accounting twenty English miles per day, and from thence again to the Falls of St. Anthony, on a direct straight line." This triangular tract in northwestern Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota would have been bounded by lines running from modern Minneapolis southeast to Pepin, then due east to near Stevens Point, and from there northwest roughly through Eau Claire to Minneapolis.
Congress investigated their claim and ultimately concluded that English law at the time prohibited any land grants to individuals. They also concluded that Carver himself never made any mention of such a grant in his book or afterwards, and finally that no Indians in the region had any knowledge of such a transaction having been made by their grandparents' generation; in 1817, Sioux elders in St. Paul had even told Carver's heirs that no chiefs with the names on the deed had ever existed. Congress concluded, on Jan. 29, 1823, not to permit Carver's heirs the rights to this land in Wisconsin. Land speculators and con-men nevertheless continued to promote the sale of portions of "Carver's Grant" for another half century.
According to the Wisconsin Historical Society:
Modern scholars who have reviewed all the evidence cannot confirm the existence of any such grant to Carver, who never mentioned it in surviving records. They have, however, documented a great deal of deceit, manipulation, and self-delusion by his heirs and their agents as they attempted to sell portions of the land in the decades following his death.[2]
The Discovery Channel series "A Haunting" produced an episode detailing the alleged haunting of a former estate on the coast of West Bay Lake in Wisconsin. The episode alleges that the ghost of Carver tormented several owners of the Summerwind estate, which eventually was abandoned and later burned to the ground as a result of a lightning strike.
Jonathan Carver (April 13, 1710 – January 31, 1780) was an American explorer and writer. He was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts and then moved with his family to Canterbury, Connecticut. He later married Abigail Robbins and became a shoemaker. He is believed to have had seven children.
In 1755 Carver joined the colonial militia at the start of the French and Indian War. During the war he studied surveying and mapping techniques. He was successful in the military and eventually became captain of a Massachusetts regiment in 1761. Two years later he quit the army with a determination to explore the new territories acquired by the British as a result of the war.
Initially Carver was unable to find a sponsor for his proposed explorations but in 1766, Robert Rogers contracted Carver to lead an expedition to find a western water route to the Pacific Ocean, the Northwest Passage. There was a great incentive to discover this route. The king and Parliament had promised a vast prize in gold for any such discovery. The eastern route to the Pacific was around the Cape of Good Hope. That route was both lengthy and contested by competing European powers.
Carver, Minnesota and Carver County, Minnesota were named in honor of Jonathan Carver for his exploration and mapping of the region.
Contents |
Carver left Fort Michilimackinac at present-day Mackinaw City, MI in the spring of 1766. Taking large fur-trading canoes, he traveled the well-utilized trade routes of the French. His route took him along the northern coast of Lake Michigan, cut across to what is now the Door County peninsula in Wisconsin and proceeded along the western edge of the bay until reaching what is now Green Bay, Wisconsin.
There was a small French settlement at the foot of Green Bay (Lake Michigan), as well as a French monastery nearby De Pere, Wisconsin. Carver resupplied here and then continued. He traveled up the Fox River to the Winnebego Indian village at the north end of Lake Winnebago at the site of the present city of Appleton, Wisconsin. Continuing up the Fox River he eventually arrived at the "Grand Portage" a well used portage between the Fox River and the Wisconsin River. This was a major fur trade location because from here (now Portage, Wisconsin) furs could proceed from the Great Lakes to the Wisconsin River, hence to the Mississippi and New Orleans.
Carver crossed to the Wisconsin River and then traveled down the Mississippi emerging at the great trade encampment at Prairie du Chien. Rather than turn south towards New Orleans, his expedition turned north into what is now Minnesota. By the late summer he had reached the Saint Anthony Falls at what is now Minneapolis. He spent some time with the tribe near the falls but turned south, down the Mississippi to find a more suitable place to spend the winter. During this portion of the trip he discovered Carver's Cave.
He spent the winter in a tribal village in what is now eastern Iowa. The next spring he encountered James Tute and James Stanley Goddard, who had been sent to accompany Carver on his journey. They continued exploring and mapping up the Mississippi River through what is now Minnesota, and Wisconsin. They then headed for Grand Portage on Lake Superior, hoping that Rogers had sent supplies there for them. However, instead of supplies they found a letter from him chiding them for having spent as much money as they already had and warning them to be more thrifty in the future. Unable to proceed without the badly-needed supplies, they headed back to Fort Michilimackinac, arriving there on August 29, 1767.
He found that his sponsor Royal Governor Robert Rogers was under suspicion of plotting treason against England. On December 6, 1767, Rogers was arrested, charged with treason, placed in irons and put in solitary confinement. While he spent a miserable winter in an unheated guardhouse, Carver probably spent time preparing his journal of the expedition for publication. In the spring of 1768 the first ship of the season took Carver and Rogers both to Detroit. Carver travelled in the relative comfort of a passenger cabin, while Rogers was forced to sit out the journey seated upon the ballast rocks in the hold of the ship. Rogers was taken to Montreal to be court-martialed, and although he was found not guilty of the charges against him, he was not returned to his position as Royal Governor. Carver submitted a list of expenses to his superiors, but payment was denied on the grounds that Rogers had not had sufficient authority to order such an expedition to take place.
Carver was outraged. He believed that he had been legitimately hired by the Crown to map and explore the newly acquired territory. He believed that he had possibly identified a Northwest Passage. He had spent two years working and now had little to show for it but maps and log books. No one seemed interested. In 1769 Carver left for England to petition the government for his promised payment and for a reward for identifying a potential Northwest Passage.
He left his wife Abigail in the colonies and never saw her again. He spent the remainder of his life petitioning the government for his payments. He did in fact ultimately get two separate grants from the crown, although not the great reward for identifying a Northwest Passage. While working at this lobbying endeavor he wrote his Travels... book, and started a second family in London.
Carver's book was an immediate success when first published in 1778, and a second London edition followed the next year; over thirty editions and versions have been published since in several languages. A very important book in the history of the exploration of the American West as Carver was the first English-speaking explorer to venture west of the upper Mississippi River. He anticipated the idea of a continental divide as he was the first to mention a large mountain range to the west (presumably the Rocky Mountains) that blocks the westward passage and serves as a continental divide. Further, the name 'Oregon' appears in print here for the first time, both in the text, and on one of the maps. Carver penetrated farther into the West than any other English explorer before the Revolution and stimulated curiosity concerning routes to the Pacific, later satisfied by Mackenzie and Lewis and Clark. The book proved and remained immensely popular. The profits did not come soon enough for him, however. He died in poverty on January 31, 1780 in London.
In the 20th century, the reliability of Carver's narrative has been debated by scholars; examination of Carver's manuscript journal establishes that it differs in important respects from the published version. More recent research points to the conclusion that while Carver actually made the tour he describes, he suppressed the fact that he performed it as a hired agent of Royal Governor Major Robert Rogers, rather than on his own responsibility.
E.G. Bourne, in a 1906 essay published in the American Historical Review, summarized his view of Carver's book: "Scholars are in general agreement that much of the work in this volume is an abridgement or adaptation of historical writings by Charlevoix, Adair, and La Hontan. Entire chapters read as near verbatim text from one or more of these other authors." [1]
After Carver's death, the editor of the third edition of his book claimed that he had in his possession a deed, signed by two chiefs of the Sioux, giving Carver title to about 10,000 square miles (30,000 km2) in what is now Wisconsin and Minnesota. The deed could not be located after the death of Carver's London widow.
In 1804, a group of descendants of Carver petitioned the U.S. Congress for ownership rights to a large tract of land in Wisconsin and Minnesota, claiming that the deed supposedly dated at the "Great Cave, May the 1st, 1767" entitled Carver and his family to over 10,000 square miles (30,000 km2) of land. Specifically they identified; "the whole of a certain tract or territory of land, bounded as follows, viz.: from the Falls of St. Anthony, running on the east bank of the Mississippi, nearly southeast, as far as Lake Pepin, where the Chippewa joins the Mississippi, and from thence eastward, five days travel, accounting twenty English miles per day, and from thence again to the Falls of St. Anthony, on a direct straight line." This triangular tract in northwestern Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota would have been bounded by lines running from modern Minneapolis southeast to Pepin, then due east to near Stevens Point, and from there northwest roughly through Eau Claire to Minneapolis.
Congress investigated their claim and ultimately concluded that English law at the time prohibited any land grants to individuals. They also concluded that Carver himself never made any mention of such a grant in his book or afterwards, and finally that no Indians in the region had any knowledge of such a transaction having been made by their grandparents' generation; in 1817, Sioux elders in St. Paul had even told Carver's heirs that no chiefs with the names on the deed had ever existed. Congress concluded, on Jan. 29, 1823, not to permit Carver's heirs the rights to this land in Wisconsin. Land speculators and con-men nevertheless continued to promote the sale of portions of "Carver's Grant" for another half century.
According to the Wisconsin Historical Society:Modern scholars who have reviewed all the evidence cannot confirm the existence of any such grant to Carver, who never mentioned it in surviving records. They have, however, documented a great deal of deceit, manipulation, and self-delusion by his heirs and their agents as they attempted to sell portions of the land in the decades following his death.[2]
The Discovery Channel series A Haunting produced an episode detailing the alleged haunting of a former estate on the coast of West Bay Lake in Wisconsin. The episode alleges that the ghost of Carver tormented several owners of the Summerwind estate, which eventually was abandoned and later burned to the ground as a result of a lightning strike.Also having one man having been hypnotized he was possessed with Carvers ghost stating that "he was strong and his seven children are weak.
JONATHAN CARVER (c. 1725-1780), American traveller, was born probably in Canterbury, Connecticut. The date usually given for his birth, 173 2, is now considered too late, since he was apparently married in 1746. In early life he followed the trade of a shoemaker and subsequently served with the provincial forces in the French and Indian wars. According to his "Journal" he conceived the idea, after the peace of 1763, of exploring Great Britain's newly acquired territory in the north-west. He is said to have set out in 1766, journeyed westward by way of the Straits of Mackinac and the Fox and Wisconsin rivers to the Mississippi, viewed the Falls of St Anthony, lived for some time among the Indians, and received from them a grant of ioo sq. m. of territory between the Mississippi and St Croix rivers. Returning east in 1768 by way of the north shore of Lake Superior he proceeded in 1769 to England, where he presented a letter of introduction to Benjamin Franklin, and made vain efforts to interest the board of trade in his investigations. In 1778 there was published in London what purported to be his own narrative of his explorations under the title of Travels through the Interior Parts of North America in the Years 1766, 1767 and 1768. It had an immediate success, was translated into French, German and Dutch, and was long generally accepted as a truthful narrative of his travels and observations, and as one of the highest authorities on the manners, customs and language of the Indians of the northern Mississippi valley. Carver died in London on the 31st of January 1780, having married a second time in England although his first wife was still living in America.
Soon after his death a new edition of the Travels was brought out by the well-known Quaker physician and author, Dr John Coakley Lettsom (1744-1815), who "edited" the work and furnished a biographical introduction. Some doubt seems to have been early entertained as to the real authorship of the work, Oliver Wolcott in 1792 writing to Jedediah Morse, the geographer, that Carver was too unlettered to have written it, and that in his belief the book was the work of some literary hack. Careful investigation of Indian life and north-western history, notably by H. R. Schoolcraft in 1823, William H. Keating in his narrative of Major Long's Expedition (1824), and Robert Greenhow in his History of Oregon (1844), showed a remarkable similarity between the Travels and the accounts of several French authorities, but these criticisms were scarcely noticed by later writers. Finally Professor E. G. Bourne, in a paper contributed to the American Historical Review for January 1906, proved beyond dispute that the bulk of Carver's alleged narrative was merely a close paraphrase of Charlevoix's Journal, La Hontan's New Voyages to North America, and James Adair's History of the American Indians. Professor Bourne's theory is that the entire book was probably the work of the facile Dr Lettsom, whose personal relations with Carver are known to have been intimate, the "journal" alone, which constituted an inconsiderable part of the whole, having been, in part, founded on Carver's random notes and recollections.
See also J. G. Godfrey, Jonathan Carver; His Travels in the North-west, 1766-1768 (No. 5 of the Parkman Club Publications, Milwaukee, Wis., 1896), and Daniel S. Durrie, "Captain Jonathan Carver and the Carver Grant," in vol. vi. of the Wisconsin Historical Society's Collections (1872).
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