HISTORY NEBRASKA MANUSCRIPT FINDING AID
RG4337.AM: Thomas Weston Tipton, 1817-1899
Manuscript: 1894; Speech: 1874
Brownville, Nebraska: State and U.S. Senator
Size: 0.5 cu.ft.; 2 items
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Thomas Weston Tipton was born near Cadiz, Harrison County, Ohio, in August 1817. His father, Rev. William Tipton, was an Ohio pioneer and pastor of the M.E. Church. He attended common schools in Huntington County, and in 1840 he graduated from Madison College at Uniontown, Pennsylvania. A Whit, he campaigned variously for Henry Clay, Zachary Taylor, Winfield Scott and John C. Fremont. In 1845 he was elected to the Ohio house, and in 1860 was a member of the Territorial Council of Nebraska, where he h ad moved. He was elected to the United States Senate by the Nebraska Legislature in 1866, and was re-elected in 1869. In 1885 he was commissioned Receiver of the United States Land Office at Bloomington, Nebraska.
Upon his arrival in Nebraska in 1858, he was elected President of Brownville College, an institution “on paper,” and organized a Congregational Society which was disbanded in 1861 with the outbreak of the Civil War. Tipton entered the First Nebraska Infantry as a chaplain in 1861, and was mustered out of Veteran Cavalry in 1865. He was immediately commissioned by President Johnson as Assessor of Internal Revenue for Nebraska. He championed immediate organization of Nebraska as a state, and was elected one of the first two state senators, later delivering Nebraska’s first speech to Congress. Tipton was one of the Senators who voted for impeachment of Johnson, and favored restoring civil rights to the state of Louisiana. He died in 1899.
SCOPE AND CONTENT NOTE
This collection consists of one box of material containing a manuscript, 1894, and a speech, 1874. The manuscript relates to Tipton’s book, Forty Years of Nebraska at Home and in Congress, Lincoln, Nebraska, State Journal Co., 1902, a special publication of the Nebraska State Historical Society in N.S.H.S. Proceedings and Collections, 2nd Series, Volume 4. The book contains biographies of territorial governors, territorial delegates, state governors, and state senators and representatives from 1854-1894 when the book was written. The speech is a copy of his address to the U.S. Senate on the matter of restoring civil rights to the state of Louisiana, delivered on April 17, 1874.
INVENTORY
Box 1
Folder
- Manuscript, 1894, pt. 1
- Manuscript, 1894, pt. 2
- Manuscript, 1894, pt. 3
- Manuscript, 1894, pt. 4
- Speech, April 17, 1874
Subject headings:
Nebraska — Biographies
Nebraska — History
Tipton, Thomas Weston, 1817-1899
DAB/HEK/jlc 04-22-1966
