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Creator
Drayton, Percival, 1812-1865
Call number
MssCol 840
Physical description
1.26 linear feet (3 boxes)
Language
English
Preferred Citation
Percival Drayton family papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library
Repository
Manuscripts and Archives Division
Access to materials
Request an in-person research appointment.

Captain Percival Drayton (1812-1865) of Charleston, South Carolina and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was a distinguished U.S. Navy officer who served in the Union Navy during the Civil War. The Percival Drayton family papers, 1827-1967, chiefly document Percival Drayton's naval career, particularly during the Civil War. Drayton's papers, 1827-1865, comprise correspondence, naval orders and reports, a diary, financial papers, and certificates. The remainder, 1845-1967, consists of papers created or received by other Drayton family members and relatives, as well as ephemera, photographs, and printed material, mostly pertaining to Percival Drayton. Also included are letters written by an unidentified relative, a naval notebook, and later family correspondence regarding Drayton's naval service, as well as two manifest books for shipments of tobacco in the Maryland-District of Columbia area, 1803-1817, their connection to the Drayton family being unclear.

Biographical/historical information

Captain Percival Drayton (1812-1865) of Charleston, South Carolina and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was a distinguished U.S. Navy officer who served in the Union Navy during the Civil War. He was the son of William Drayton (1776-1846) and his first wife Ann or Anna Gadsden (died 1814) of Charleston, South Carolina. Percival's siblings from that marriage were Emma Gadsden (1805-circa 1838), Thomas Fenwick (1808-1891), and William Sidney (1813-1860). William Drayton married his second wife, Maria Heyward, in 1817. They had two surviving sons, William Heyward (1817-1892) and Henry Edward (1823-1862). After the death of their mother, the elder children spent time in Philadelphia under the care of her relatives.

Percival's father, known as Colonel William Drayton for his service in the War of 1812, was a lawyer who served as U.S. Congressman from 1825 to 1833. Having taken the unpopular position of supporting Federal authority during the Nullification Crisis of 1832-1833, he left Charleston at the end of his term, moving his family north to Philadelphia. He was the last president of the Second Bank of the United States, from 1839 to its closure in 1841.

Thomas Fenwick Drayton (1808-1891) graduated with his friend Jefferson Davis in the West Point Class of 1828. He remained in South Carolina. After U.S. Army service he worked for a time in the railroad industry, and served in the state legislature. He lived at Fish Haul Plantation on Hilton Head Island with his wife Emma Catherine Pope, who inherited the plantation from her mother. A brigadier-general in the Confederate Army, he was in charge of coastal defenses at Hilton Head during the battle of Port Royal in 1861. The plantation was confiscated by the U.S. Army after the battle, the island being used as the headquarters of the Department of the South.

William Sidney Drayton (1813-1860) served in the U.S. Navy from 1832 to 1851, resigning at the rank ofs Lieutenant. He married Sylvia Livingston of New York City in 1850. She was the daughter of Mortimer Livingston (1808-1857), president of the New York and Havre Steamship Company, for which William S. Drayton would become a shipping agent. Her mother was Sylvie de Pau (also Depau, 1772-1855), the youngest daughter of the French naval officer the Comte de Grasse. The Draytons had four children, Mortimer, Catherine, Maud and Percival Langdon (1858-1892); only Maud and Percival Langdon survived childhood. Percival Langdon Drayton graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, resigning from the Navy as Ensign in 1886. Shortly after William's death, Sylvia Drayton acquired a house and property in Hyde Park, New York, named Drayton Hall. In 1868 she married British diplomat Temple Kirkpatrick and had a daughter, Sylvia.

William Heyward Drayton (1817-1892), a lawyer, resided in Philadelphia, as did his brother Henry Edward Drayton (1823-1862), a physician. William Heyward married Harriet Coleman, and Henry married her sister Sarah Coleman. Sarah died in 1852 after giving birth to their son James Coleman Drayton (1852-1934). Henry then married Mary Brady and had a daughter Emily; he died in April 1862, his mother Maria Heyward Drayton having died in January. James Coleman Drayton (1852-1934) married Charlotte Augusta Astor, the daughter of William B. and Caroline Schermerhorn Astor of New York, in 1879. Before divorcing in 1896 they had three children, including William Astor Drayton (1888-1973).

It was through his brother William Sidney's marriage that Percival Drayton became friends with Lydig Monson Hoyt (1821-1868) and Alexander Hamilton (1815-1889), known as Alexander Hamilton Jr. Hamilton and Hoyt married, respectively, Mortimer Livingston's sisters Margaret Angelica (called Angelica, 1820-1896) and Blanche Geraldine (called Geraldine, 1822-1897). The Hoyt family lived at "The Point" in Staatsburgh, also in the town of Hyde Park.

Lydig and Geraldine Hoyt's daughter Gertrude Livingston Hoyt (1855-1921) was Percival Drayton's godchild, and Alexander Hamilton Jr.'s niece by marriage. Family ties are also seen in the role relatives played as executors of estates. Gertrude's brother and executor Gerald Hoyt was also an executor for Percival Langton Drayton, who left items bequeathed to him by his uncle to his cousin James Coleman Drayton. William Heyward Drayton and Alexander Hamilton Jr. were Captain Percival Drayton's executors. Hamilton, a New York City lawyer and grandson of Alexander Hamilton, also managed Percival Drayton's local finances.

Percival Drayton

Percival Drayton entered the U.S. Navy as an acting midshipman on December 1, 1827. He passed his midshipman examinations in 1833, and was commissioned Lieutenant in 1838, Commander in 1855, and Captain in 1862. Prior to the Civil War he served at sea in the Brazil, Mediterranean, Pacific and East India Squadrons, and participated in the Paraguay Expedition (1858-1859), assisting Flag Officer William Shubrick. Among the vessels he sailed on were U.S. Ships Hudson, Constitution, Enterprise, Yorktown, Columbus, Mississippi, Independence and Sabine.

With a national naval academy not yet in existence, Drayton attended naval schools at Norfolk and New York at the beginning of his career. He gained fluency in foreign languages during his service, and took an extended leave in 1848 to travel in Europe. In 1859 and 1860 he was a member of the Naval Board of Examiners at Annapolis.

Drayton also spent much time ashore in the 1850s on ordnance duty. He was on such duty at the Philadelphia Navy Yard from September 1860 until his detachment on September 18, 1861 to join the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron under Flag Officer Samuel Francis Du Pont. Drayton took command of the USS Pocahontas on October 5th, and in late October was ordered to proceed to Port Royal Sound, South Carolina. He was present at its capture on November 7, participating in the bombardment of forts defended by his brother Thomas. Percival Drayton then took command of USS Pawnee and, in the following months, participated in operations off the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, notably at St. Helena Sound and the Edisto River; Tybee Roads off Savannah; Fernandina, Florida; and Stono River, where he was senior naval officer.

In September 1862 Drayton was detached from the Pawnee to take command of the coastal monitor USS Passaic, commissioned in New York on November 25. On December 29, 1862, Drayton and the Passaic sailed from Hampton Roads, Virginia for Beaufort, North Carolina in company with the USS Monitor, each ship under tow. Passing through a storm off Cape Hatteras, the Monitor foundered on the 31st with the loss of part of its crew. The Passaic also struggled with flooding, but managed to arrive safely on January 1, 1863. It then joined the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron off Port Royal. The Passaic assisted in the capture of the blockade-runner Glide at Wassaw Sound in February 1863, and joined assaults on Fort McAllister, Georgia, in March 1863, and Charleston harbor defenses on April 7, 1863, where the ship was badly mauled. In May the Passaic was temporarily decommissioned in New York for repairs, and Drayton took up duty as superintendent of the Ordnance Department of the New York Navy Yard for the remainder of the year.

For the whole of 1864 Drayton served as Fleet Captain of the West Gulf Blockading Squadron and Captain of the USS Hartford, the flagship of Rear Admiral David G. Farragut, in blockading operations in the Gulf and before the port of Mobile. He was at Farragut's side during the battle of Mobile Bay on August 5, 1864, resulting in Union control of the Bay and its forts. In December Drayton sailed with Farragut in the Hartford to a victorious welcome in New York City and a brief leave. He spent the following weeks in Washington, New York and Philadelphia, awaiting orders to attend Farragut, and hoping for a promotion to command the West Gulf Blockading Squadron, which did not materialize. In March 1865 he was at City Point, Virginia, attending to naval court duties on board USS Baltimore. Drayton was appointed Chief of the Bureau of Navigation on April 28, 1865.

Percival Drayton died in Washington on August 4, 1865 after a brief illness, and was buried there with military honors. His remains were later removed by his brother Thomas F. Drayton to the family plot at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, the two brothers having resumed contact when the war ended. Knowing that Thomas was now impoverished, Percival Drayton added a codicil to his will on his deathbed, leaving $30,000. in trust to his brother.

In reporting his death on August 7, 1865, the New York Times described Percival Drayton as "a tall, commanding figure, his features expressing much determination and mental strength," a man "universally respected and esteemed." On August 5, 1865, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles noted the following in his diary: "Captain Drayton died last night. The nation is not aware of the loss it has sustained. … Truthful, intelligent, discriminating, with no partialities or prejudices that were allowed to interfere with his duties, he was invaluable."

Scope and arrangement

The Percival Drayton family papers, 1827-1967, chiefly document Percival Drayton's naval career, particularly during the Civil War. Drayton's papers, 1827-1865, comprise correspondence, naval orders and reports, a diary, financial papers, and certificates. The remainder, 1845-1967, consists of papers created or received by other Drayton family members and relatives, as well as ephemera, photographs, and printed material, mostly pertaining to Percival Drayton. Also included are letters written by an unidentified relative, a naval notebook, and later family correspondence regarding Drayton's naval service, as well as two manifest books for shipments of tobacco in the Maryland-District of Columbia area, 1803-1817, their connection to the Drayton family being unclear.

Of particular interest are Drayton's letters to Lydig M. Holt and Alexander Hamilton Jr., 1860-1865, sharing his activities and views on naval and political matters, as well as mention of personal and family affairs; letters received from John A. Dahlgren, David G. Farragut and other naval officers, 1845-1865; and naval orders and reports kept by Drayton, 1845-1864.

Percival Drayton's correspondence consists of letters sent and received. Letters sent are to Alexander Hamilton Jr., 1862-1865, and Lydig M. Hoyt, 1860-1865, his friends and relatives by marriage. Letters frankly describe his naval duties and activities, wartime naval operations, conditions on the monitor Passaic, and his views on the war and slavery. Family matters are mentioned in passing and generally concern his widowed sister-in-law Sylvia and her children. Selected letters from those acquired in 1906 were edited for publication that year in the Bulletin of The New York Public Library; omissions usually concerned family and financial matters. Additional letters to both men were acquired in 1977 and interfiled with the published letters.

Letters received are chiefly letters from naval officers and surgeons; the contents are often of a mixed official and personal nature. Letters from his friend John A. Dahlgren, 1851-1858, 1863-1865, contain detailed discussion of naval ordnance and the condition of the U.S. Navy. David G. Farragut's letters discuss naval business and news of his family; there are no letters dated 1864. Also present are family letters from Drayton's brothers, sister-in-law Sylvia L. Drayton, and Lydig M. Hoyt. Early letters from William S. Drayton 1838-circa 1860 were written while a naval officer, but mostly concern his health, plans and travel on leave. William S. Drayton's letters to his wife are also found in the collection under her name.

Naval orders and reports, 1861-1864, contain orders and instructions directed to Percival Drayton individually and as a squadron officer, and reports written and and received by Drayton, in original or copy, with some duplicates. Reports, in chronological order, chiefly concern actions of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron and instructions for the blockade of Mobile. Among them are reports on ordnance expenditures, gun-carriage repairs and other reports for the Passaic, and Drayton's draft report [1863] of the Passaic's voyage to Beaufort, North Carolina in late December 1862. In 1893 selected items were borrowed from these documents, then in the possession of his nephew James Coleman Drayton, and numbered for copying by the U.S. Navy. These are arranged separately in numerical order reflecting chronological order, with a contemporary copy of listed items. Pre-Civil War documents include a list of U.S.S. Independence officers, 1850, and a list of ports of call for its Mediterranean cruise, 1849-1852.

Drayton's journal, 1863 June 15-1864 January 8, in French and English, contains brief entries denoting his activities and weather conditions in the New York City area while superintendent of ordnance at the New York Navy Yard, ending with his departure on the USS Hartford. Drayton's financial papers consist of lists of stocks, stockbroker vouchers, and receipts, giving an indication of his wealth. Certificates document his naval appointments from acting midshipman to lieutenant, 1827-1838, with a membership certificate for the Naval Lyceum, 1840.

The collection also contains miscellaneous correspondence and papers of Drayton's family members and relatives, and their descendants, including step-mother Maria Heyward Drayton; brothers Thomas Fenwick Drayton, William Sidney Drayton, William Heyward Drayton and Henry Edward Drayton; nephews James Coleman Drayton and Percival Langdon Drayton; sister-in-law Sylvia Livingston Drayton; Alexander Hamilton Jr.; Lydig Monson Hoyt, and his daughter Gertrude Livingston Hoyt.

James Coleman Drayton letters received, 1886-1894, comprise several family letters and a U.S. Navy letter and list of 1893 May 18 regarding the loan and copying of Percival Drayton documents; a second carbon-copy of the list has been placed with the returned (and numbered) documents.

Maria Heywood Drayton's estate is documented by a copy of will and codicil, circa 1862, and the codicil as copied by Percival Drayton with a comment for Sylvia L. Drayton, circa 1862.

Percival Langdon Drayton papers, 1865-1877, consist of a letter to him as a young child from S. M. De Peyster, 1865 September 4, and correspondence regarding his status as U.S. Naval Academy cadet midshipman, 1876-1877.

Sylvia L. Drayton's papers are chiefly letters received from her husband William S. Drayton (mostly undated) and genealogical materials concerning her mother's life and ancestry. These are John Gilmary Shea's brief sketch of the Comte de Grasse with printed matter, and calligraphic copies of obituary notices for Sylvie de Grasse Alexandrine de Pau (1772-1855).

Alexander Hamilton Jr.'s papers, 1850s-1879, reflect his role as Drayton's friend and executor and family advisor; including efforts to build a memorial for Drayton at Trinity Church (initiated 1865 and erected 1867), and attempts to obtain a pardon for Thomas F. Drayton.

Letters sent and drafts, 1864-circa 1867, comprise a letter to his wife Angelica Livingston Hamilton on his return home from Drayton's funeral, 1865 August 8; draft letters to the President of the United States attempting to obtain a promotion for Percival Drayton in 1864, and a pardon for his brother Thomas in 1865, and a draft text for the Trinity Church memorial. Letters received, 1850s-circa 1867, are from John Jacob Astor, Jr., Thomas F. Drayton, and William H. Drayton regarding Percival Drayton, 1865 October 31-circa 1867; Admiral David G. Farragut, regarding a pardon for Thomas F. Drayton, [1865] November 4; and William S. Drayton concerning his wife's health, 1850s.

Papers relating to Percival Drayton's estate, 1864-1879, contain Drayton's note to his executors, a copy of his will and codicil, financial statements, and a letter of William Heyward Drayton to Alexander Hamilton Jr., 1879 March, enclosing an 1878 court decree.

Hamilton's file for William S. Drayton consists of an undated list of his stocks and two letters from architect George Platt to Mrs. Mortimer Livingston (Sylvia L. Drayton's mother) regarding plans to build a house at Hyde Park, June 1860.

Letters written to Gertrude L. Hoyt, 1907, 1912, thank her for the offprint of Percival Drayton's letters printed in The New York Public Library Bulletin (1906). Recipients include Richard W. Gilder, Alfred T. Mahan, James Ford Rhodes, and Admiral John H. Upshur.

Drayton family papers comprise correspondence on behalf of family members regarding Drayton's naval service and patriotic society membership, and notes, 1941, 1967; unsorted letters written at Hyde Park, 1850s-1860s, probably by a member of the Livingston or Drayton families, with mention of Maud Drayton (born 1857); and a manuscript naval notebook written from both ends, with instructions for the handling of a rigged ship. The distinctive style of capitalization resembles a pen trial on Sylvia L. Drayton's stationary containing a medical note.

Drayton family ephemera, 1800s-1900s, mostly belonged to, or pertain to, Percival Drayton. Present are botanical souvenirs from Italy, 1850-1851; a message written in Chinese with English translation, 1846; calling cards for Percival Drayton (two copper plates) and William S. Drayton; a printed leaflet with the text of the presentation of a sword to Percival Drayton, 1863 May 27, and his reply of July 9; a manuscript copy of a letter from George Washington to William Drayton, 1786 November 20; and graphics and newspaper clippings.

An albumen print of Drayton and Farragut on the deck of the USS Hartford, cartes-de-visite photographs of Civil War personages, and two images of Drayton family members constitute the collection's photographs, 1850s-1920s.

Printed material consists of a copy of the United States Democratic Review (August 1858) containing a biographical sketch of Mortimer Livingston, and Percival Drayton's copy of a pamphlet by Reverdy Johnson concerning the court-martial of Fitz John Porter, 1863.

Two incomplete shipping manifest books pertain to shipments of tobacco in the Maryland-District of Columbia area; orders for Washington Bowie and Dr. Ninian Magruder are mentioned, among others. The relationship of the volumes to the Drayton family is unclear.

Administrative information

Source of acquisition

The Percival Drayton Family Papers were acquired by donation from Gertrude L. Hoyt in 1906; by purchase from Caravan-Maritime Books in 1977; and by donation from William Drayton in 1983. The 1906 Hoyt gift of letters of Percival Drayton to Alexander Hamilton Jr. and Lydig M. Hoyt (cataloged as the Percival Drayton letters, 1861-1865) was augmented in 1977 by letters of Drayton to Hamilton and Hoyt, 1860-1865; some Hamilton correspondence regarding Drayton; and letters to Gertrude L. Hoyt, 1907, 1912. The 1983 accession of Drayton family papers included a substantial amount of Percival Drayton's papers, as well as items connected to Hamilton and Hoyt. To facilitate access, the Percival Drayton Letters and the Drayton Family Papers were merged into one collection in 2018.

Processing information

Processed by Susan P. Waide, 2018.

Using the collection

Location

Manuscripts and Archives Division
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, New York, NY 10018-2788
Brooke Russell Astor Reading Room, Third Floor, Room 328

Alternative form available

Selected letters from the Gertrude L. Hoyt donation were published with textual omissions in "Naval Letters from Captain Percival Drayton, 1861-1865," Bulletin of The New York Public Library 10, nos. 11-12 (November-December 1906): 587-625, 639-681.