Niagara Harbour & Dock Company Ledger Book

Description

Médias

Object

Description

The Niagara Wharf Daily Register, 1836-1838, is the oldest of four surviving wharfage and storage registers from the Niagara Harbor & Dry Dock Company.
It is a brown leather bound book measuring approximately 32cm x 22cm x 3cm. The spine of the book is severely worn reflecting its day-to-day usage. It contains approximately 100 pages with printed blue horizontal lines with red vertical lines that demark columns for dates, entries, and figures.
Entries (now brown with age) were hand written by several, mostly unidentified, authors. Most of the swirling script is legible and fairly easy to interpret. Entries were made in traditional British monetary denominations (pounds, shillings and pence). The ledger documents activity at the dock from November 1, 1836 through all of 1837 and up to the end of November 1838.
The Register documents daily income and disbursements for use of the dock facilities by various shippers, merchants and farmers, and "harbor dues" paid by boats or ships calling at the port, e.g., "Steamboat William IV" and the "Schooner(s) Ellen, Wood Duck, and Princess Victoria". Various commodities are charged appropriately, e.g., "Fruit and Oysters-2p", "Whiskey, Ale, Fish, Lard, Salt per Barrel- 4p", etc. While most of the shipping was to and from Toronto, other ports, e.g, Prescott and Grimsby, as well as Oswego and Ogdensburg, made Niagara-on-the-Lake an active international port in the late 1830s.

Identifiant local

969.50.1

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