Skip to main content Skip to main navigation

William Sulzer papers

Call Number

MS 607

Date

1860s?-1941, inclusive

Creator

Sulzer, William, 1863-1941

Extent

36 Linear feet in 35 boxes of various sizes

Language of Materials

The documents in the collection are predominantly in English. A small number are in German, Spanish, and Arabic.

Abstract

William Sulzer (1863-1941) was a New York State politician holding state and federal offices from 1890-1914, and is perhaps most recognized as the only New York State governor to have been impeached. The collection holds a range of documents related to Sulzer's public policy positions as legislator, governor, and candidate for political office; impeachment as New York State governor in 1913; fight against Tammany Hall; mining interests, especially in Alaska; "of counsel" participation in the lawsuit "Texas Cherokees and Affiliated Bands versus the State of Texas" circa 1919-1921; advocate of the Bahai faith; membership in the Masons; and authorship of poetry/doggerels and other writings.

Biographical / Historical

William Sulzer (1863-1941), elected the thirty-sixth Governor of New York State in 1912, held office for less than ten months and was the only chief executive to be removed from office after an impeachment trial. Born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, March 18, 1863, he was educated in public schools there, and at Columbia Law School in New York City, where he was admitted to the bar in 1884. He also became active in the Democratic Party at the time. Five years later he was elected to represent the 14th district in the State Assembly and continued in that office until 1894, serving as speaker in 1893 and minority leader in 1894. Elected to Congress in 1894, Sulzer held the office for eighteen years, serving during his last term as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. He resigned in 1912 after he was elected Governor of New York.

Early in his administration, Sulzer broke ranks with Charles Murphy the leader of the Democratic Party organization in New York City, often referred to at the time as Tammany, after the name of the Party's headquarters, Tammany Hall. Their dispute initially concerned matters of patronage when Sulzer refused to appoint a number of Murphy's allies to state posts. It became more intense when Sulzer promoted a reform agenda that included open primaries for choosing party nominations instead of the party convention. In the meantime, a special legislative committee was appointed to investigate the governor and impeachment proceedings were commenced. He was charged with misappropriating campaign funds for personal use. The High Court of Impeachment found him guilty and he was removed from office October 17, 1913. Subsequently he was elected to the State Assembly and ran for governor again in 1914 on the American Party and Prohibition Party tickets. In 1916 he declined the American Party nomination for president. Thereafter, he was not actively involved in politics except in 1928, when he publicly denounced the presidential candidacy of Alfred E. Smith on the grounds of Smith's religion and ties to Tammany Hall.

While Sulzer's political career and, especially, impeachment garners much biographical attention, less noted is his long interest and involvement in Alaska and mining. He first traveled to Alaska in 1893, shortly before entering Congress, eventually making about 30 trips there. In 1899, he started looking for mining prospects in the territory, and purchased the claims to copper lodes at Jumbo Mountain on Prince of Wales Island. He formed the Alaska Industrial Company to develop the mines, which was initially unsuccessful. The situation turned more favorable in 1901 when Sulzer's younger brother, Charles (1879-1919), went to the Jumbo to take over the operation. By 1907 the Jumbo was active, producing a substantial amount of copper ore. Meanwhile, in Washington, William was advocating for Alaska, both in terms of enhancing its political power through home rule and authorizing a delegate to represent Alaska in Congress and in developing its railroad infrastructure to access natural resources. Charles and William's successes would end in the 1910s as William left Congress and fell from political power after his impeachment and Charles, after a term as Alaska's delegate to Congress, died in 1919.

The Jumbo mine shut down around the time of Charles's death, leaving behind the "ghost town" of Sulzer, but William continued to hold mining interests in Alaska for the rest of his life, notably for gold in the Chandalar and Chisana districts, though these met with little success. Sulzer also held mining interests elsewhere, including in the Hassayampa mining district near Prescott, Arizona.

In 1908, Sulzer married Clara Rodelheim (1868-1948) of Philadelphia. By the late 1910s, after the close of his political career, Sulzer returned to private law practice in New York City. One case he was involved with as "of counsel" to lead attorney George W. Fields of Oklahoma City was The Texas-Cherokees, and Associate Bands vs. The State of Texas. (Several documents in the collection relate to this matter.) In this capacity he assisted in drafting the petition to have the Cherokees' claims over treaty obligations heard by the Supreme Court, a petition that seems to have been denied in 1921. William Sulzer died in New York on November 6, 1941, and is buried in Evergreen Cemetery, near his Elizabeth, NJ, birthplace.

(Sources: The first two paragraphs concerning Sulzer's early years and political career were copied almost exactly, with only minor edits, from the biographical sketch used by the New York State Library for their finding aid to the Sulzer scrapbooks they hold (see the Related Materials note, which includes a link to the site). The Alaska mining portions were based largely on information from Sulzer's entry on the Alaska Mining Hall of Fame Foundation website. Other sources included Wikipedia, the New York Times obituary, and documents in the collection.)

Arrangement

The container list presents the collection generally as an inventory of content by box. The collection is largely unprocessed but there was an attempt to roughly organize/box the content by subject and format.

Scope and Contents

The collection holds a range of documents related to William Sulzer's public policy positions as legislator, governor, and candidate for political office; impeachment as New York State governor in 1913; fight against Tammany Hall; mining interests, especially in Alaska; "of counsel" participation in the lawsuit "Texas Cherokees and Affiliated Bands versus the State of Texas" circa 1919-1921; advocate of the Bahai faith; membership in the Masons; and authorship of poetry ("doggerels" as he refers to them at one point in the collection) and other writings.

Documents in the collection include correspondence (primarily outgoing carbon copies from Sulzer, with some incoming), drafts and final versions of speeches and articles, memoranda, travel journals, photographs and pictorial works such as postcards, memoirs/reminiscences, printed matter, scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, original drawings of political cartoons, certificates, printing wood blocks, and more. One unusual object is a (the?) pen U.S. President William Howard Taft used to sign the legislation authorizing the salvage of the U.S.S. Maine from Havana Harbor.

There is a large degree of redundancy in the collection, which has not been "weeded" for excess copies of material. Consequently, the collection holds many copies not only of identical pamphlets and other printed/published matter but also of Sulzer's typescript copies of speeches, letters, etc.

The collection has not been processed to any significant extent, but it has been surveyed for content. The container list attempts to provide further detail as to the content of each box based on the processing archivist's survey.

Access Restrictions

Materials in this collection are stored offsite. For more information on making arrangements to consult them, please visit www.nyhistory.org/library/visit.

Use Restrictions

Taking images of documents from the library collections for reference purposes by using hand-held cameras and in accordance with the library's photography guidelines is encouraged. As an alternative, patrons may request up to 20 images per day from staff. Application to use images from this collection for publication should be made in writing to: Department of Rights and Reproductions, The New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024-5194, rightsandrepro@nyhistory.org. Phone: (212) 873-3400 ext. 282.

Copyrights and other proprietary rights may subsist in individuals and entities other than the New-York Historical Society, in which case the patron is responsible for securing permission from those parties. For fuller information about rights and reproductions from N-YHS visit: https://www.nyhistory.org/about/rights-reproductions

Preferred Citation

The collection should be cited as: William Sulzer papers, MS 607, New-York Historical Society.

Location of Materials

Materials in this collection are stored offsite. For more information on making arrangements to consult them, please visit www.nyhistory.org/library/visit.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Most of the material in the collection was received at various times as a gift from William Sulzer in the 1930s-1941. Some material was received from his wife, Clara, in 1942, shortly after Sulzer's death. A few scrapbooks (noted in the container list) were received from other institutions that had received them from Nathan Reich, a business associate of Sulzer's (see the Related Materials note).

Related Materials

N-YHS has several of Sulzer's speeches and other material, some of which is also in this collection, cataloged individually. These can be found by searching on Sulzer's name in the on-line catalog, Bobcat.

N-YHS holds the papers of E. Gibert Schermerhorn. Schermerhorn's papers include a scrapbook related to his position as Military Secretary for Governor Sulzer, and various articles and other documents there relate to Sulzer and his governorship.

In addition to N-YHS, Sulzer placed a sizable amount of his papers at Cornell University, which has a rough on-line finding aid for the collection: William Sulzer papers at Cornell

In Box 10 of N-YHS's collection are 5 scrapbooks which had been donated initially to 5 other institutions by Nathan Reich, a business associate of Sulzer's. These scrapbooks seem to be part of a larger initiative by Sulzer in the 1930s to spread his materials around to many institutions. The New York State Library has compiled about 30 of these: William Sulzer scrapbook collection at NY State Library

The University of Alaska at Fairbanks holds a collection of papers and photographs related to Sulzer's mining interests, especially at Chandalar; see: Sulzer mining papers at University of Alaska, Fairbanks

A list of additional repositories with Sulzer material can be found at Sulzer's entry in the on-line Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

Collection processed by

Larry Weimer

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2023-08-21 15:48:15 -0400.
Using Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language: Finding aid written in English

Processing Information

A portion of the collection was arranged and cataloged in 1998. In early 2022, archivist Larry Weimer boxed the remaining, and larger portion, of the collection and documented the whole in summary fashion in this finding aid. While some attempt was made to box related material together, little to no physical processing was done. This will be especially noticeable in boxes 28-31, which hold Sulzer's original letterboxes with unsorted documents, much of it clippings in deteriorated condition.

The previously cataloged portion comprises much, though not all, of the content now in boxes 1-4; some related additional documents were added to the earlier cataloged portion, while some was re-arranged to be boxed with larger amounts of related content found elsewhere in the collection. Also, several political cartoon drawings that had been separated to the Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections at some point were reunited with the collection and with the several other drawings that had not been separated; these drawings are in boxes 34 and 35.

Repository

New-York Historical Society
New-York Historical Society
170 Central Park West
New York, NY 10024