American Historical Ephemera and Early Photography, including The Larry Ness Collection of Native American Photography

Group of approx. 50 letters spanning 1868-1923 (bulk 1880s-1890s). Majority of letters addressed to Alexander Dallas Bache Smead, with small amount of additional correspondence from Smead. Correspondents include military officers with whom Smead served on the frontier, family members, friends, and politicians. Various locations, including: "Fort McPherson, Nebraska," "Paris," "Chicago," "Ft. Verde A.T.," "Washington, D.C.," "Ft. Concho, Texas," "Fort Reno, I.T." and more. Provenance: Descended directly in the Smead family to current consignor, a descendant of Alexander Dallas Bache Smead.

Smead spent an extensive portion of his military career serving with the Third Cavalry in the western United States. Most notable amongst his correspondence is a 6pp letter to his mother, 27 April 1874, in which he describes his circumstances at Fort McPherson, Nebraska, and the current state of Indian affairs. The letter reads, in part: "Captain Meinhold [Captain Charles Meinhold (1812-1877), commander Troop B at Fort McPherson] is here. His company went off in February expecting to be back in a few months...Orders have now been issued that the companies who went up to the Indian Agencies will remain there as garrisons for a long time....He says that the Indians have consulted together & with the whites. They do not want war, but they positively refuse to go off to another part of the country, as is now urged by the authorities of the Indian Department. He thinks the Indians are quite right & their claims. He says, as is well known to all Army men out west, that the marauders among the Sioux should be promptly sought & punished for their misdeeds as often as they occur; so that whites will be protected & the orderly Indians be encouraged to behave themselves well. This is admitted by their chiefs to be fair & proper. The blood-thirsty scalawags who want the Indians exterminated in order to gobble up their land & hunt their buffalo, and the idiotic peace-at-any-price-people who come out here on peace commissions are equally odious to the Indians. They think that one party wants to shoot them, & he other party to over-reach them. The fact is they want fair dealing, & an impartial administration of rewards and punishments...."

Additional correspondence includes letters written to Smead by friends from his military service, family members, and friends. Content includes politics, family news, commentary on the military, and more. Approximately a dozen letters are in French, including letters addressed to Smead. (Jane Van Ness Smead, A.D.B. Smead's only child, received a portion of her education in France.) In addition to his letter to his mother from Fort McPherson, Smead has five other letters in the archive.

[With:] JOHNSON, President Andrew (1808-1875). Framed commission appointing "A.D. Bache Smead" as Second Lieutenant in the Third Regiment of Cavalry. 4 July 1868. Stamp-signed by President Andrew Johnson. Countersigned by John M. Schofield, Secretary of War.

Alexander Dallas Bache Smead began and ended his life in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of Carlisle Barracks, one of the oldest U.S. Army installations. The Smeads were an old Carlisle family with deep military connections. Capt. Raphael Cummings Smead (1801-1848) graduated West Point in 1825, and died from yellow fever following service with the 4th U.S. Artillery in the Mexican-American War. Alexander Dallas Bache Smead was his son, and was named after his father's good friend from West Point Alexander Dallas Bache, grandson of Benjamin Franklin. "A Smead Genealogy" (Greenfield, MA: 1928) provides the following biography of Alexander Dallas Bache Smead: "[he] was educated in the public schools of Carlisle, Pa., and in Dickinson College, graduating June 25th, 1868, at the head of his class. Appointed, and (after a military examination) commissioned a Lieutenant in the Third U. S. Cavalry, in which he served in nearly all parts of the United· States, but chiefly in the 'Far West, among twenty different tribes of Indians, and was engaged in three serious Indian wars in the Southwest and the Northwest. By 1878 he had risen to be Regimental Adjutant of the third U. S. Cavalry. But having, during the intervals of peace, studied law and been admitted to the Philadelphia Bar, he resigned from the Army in 1880, and has since practiced law in Pennsylvania, except during the Spanish-American war of 1898, when he returned to the service as Captain of the U. S. Volunteers in Cuba." In 1888, Smead married Jennie Stuart, of Carlisle, Pa., and they had one child, Jane Van Ness (1888-1979). Jane studied for four years in the lycees of Grenoble and of Paris, France. Later she pursued post-graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md., where she received the degree of Master of Arts in 1918 and that of Doctor of Philosophy in 1921.