Object of the Month – June 2010
French book belonged to Doty
In addition to being a politician, Gov. James Duane Doty was a land speculator and wheeler-dealer of dubious ethics. In the early 1830s he was embroiled in a land issue involving claims to land along the lower Fox River.
Doty undertook a scheme to acquire government land for 62 claimants in return for a percentage of the land awarded. If successful, Doty stood to gain ownership of several thousand acres of land from the south shore of Lake Winnebago to Green Bay.
Many of the cases were of dubious validity, and in at least two cases involved multiple claims by the same person using different names. Doty claimed ignorance of the “mixup,” as the claimants spoke French and he was ignorant of the French language.
Doty biographer Alice E. Smith disputes Doty’s claim of linguistic ignorance, stating that ever since Doty arrived at Detroit as a young man “he had scarcely been out of range of the sound of the French tongue.”
The Neenah Hstorical Society owns French-language book about the civilization of the Incas. The book bears the signature of James Doty, dated 1825. This would seem to lend credence to Alice Smith’s assertion.