Stickney, Lyman D.

Born: 1815-03-15 Vermont

Died: 1868-08-02

Lyman D. Stickney was an attorney, agent for the U.S. Post Office Department, railroad agent, newspaper publisher, tax commissioner, and colony booster. In January 1843, he married Eliza Jane Nugent in Lawrence, Indiana. Starting at least as early as 1846, he worked as an attorney in New Harmony, Indiana, a position he remained in until at least 1852. During 1851, he also worked as a special agent for the U.S. Post Office, investigating depredation cases. From the mid-1850s onward, Stickney was involved in a variety of enterprises, traveled often in the interest of these enterprises, and developed a reputation as a man willing to leverage his government contacts to help improve his personal financial situation. In 1855 or 1856, he moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he worked as a secretary and agent for the Memphis and Little Rock Railroad Company. By 1860, he was publishing a newspaper called the Memphis Enquirer. In February 1861, he moved to Fort Myers, Florida to oversee operations on a colony he and a partner founded after receiving a land grant from the Florida Legislature. The colony was rumored to be an illicit slave-trade operation. After this venture failed he relocated to Key West, where he ran a shipping business that traded with both Confederates and Unionists. In July 1862, President Abraham Lincoln appointed him tax commissioner for Florida. During the Civil War, Stickney was involved in a number of capitalistic schemes which used various methods to try to win federal support for a campaign to liberate Florida from Confederate control, confiscate Confederate land and property, and colonize the state with Unionists. Although his schemes failed, Stickney's efforts helped sustain federal interest in Florida throughout the war.

Joseph Thompson Dodge, Genealogy of the Dodge Family of Essex County, Mass., 1629-1894 (Madison, WI: Democrat Printing, 1894), 281; Indiana Marriages Database through 1850, 12 January 1843, Indiana State Library, Indianapolis, IN; C. W. Cady, ed., The Indiana Annual Register and Pocket Manual, Revised and Corrected for the Year 1846 (Indianapolis: Samuel Turner, 1846), 135; Register of all Officers and Agents, Civil, Military, and Naval, in the Service of the United States, on the Thirtieth September, 1851 (Washington, DC: Gideon, 1851), 770; John Livingston, Livingston's Law Register, for 1852 (New York: U.S. Law Magazine, 1852), 73; American Railroad Journal (New York), 3 March 1855, 142:1; John L. Mitchell's Tennessee State Gazetteer, and Business Directory, for 1860-61 (Nashville: John L. Mitchell, 1860), 128; H.R. Ex. Doc. No. 18, 38th Cong., 2nd Sess. (1865), 72; David James Coles, Far From Fields of Glory: Military Operations in Florida During the Civil War, 1864-1865, PhD diss., (Florida State University, 1996), 9-14; 33; Appointment of Lyman D. Stickney as U.S. Direct Tax Commissioner for the State of Florida.