In mid-May, I had the opportunity to attend the ribbon-cutting and dedication of the new archives building of the Chicago & North Western Historical Society in Union, Illinois. What a wonderful day it was! This project has been in the works for some time, and to have it officially open for research was an exciting event.
One of the many wonderful things about the new space is that they have consolidated their archival holdings (well, almost) into one location and are now able to sort and organize items, making things easier to find. For seven years or so, I’ve been hunting around for certain ledger books, not knowing whether they even exist. Sometimes there was success, sometimes not.
First Research in the Organized Space
Two days after the dedication ceremony, I was taken to shelving where those previously-difficult-to-access giant and heavy and dirty ledger books had been sorted by railroad line, journal vs. ledger, land plat books, and a set of thick books that were the cash listings. Cash books were the line-item registers for payments, which were then summarized in those journal and ledger books.
Over several years, I’d already looked at all pages of the Journals and Ledgers for the early years of both the Chicago & Dakota (the stretch of rails while still in MN) and the Dakota Central (its legal name after the tracks crossed into Dakota Territory).
But Journal and Ledger entries are summary-level entries, after the detailed line-items were added up into a single number. Thus, no actual detail. No specific links to the surveying project or early construction tasks beyond lump-sum totals.
The cash books held the promise of showing specific payments. Such as, oh, say, payments to their lead surveyor, or reimbursing him for expenses. That kind of thing.
The Cash Books
The cash books were now accessible, but not yet sorted and organized. Most bindings were so deteriorated there were no legible notes as to year or specific rail line.
I stood back, scanned the spines, and reached out to randomly choose one.
Now, these cash books are large and quite heavy. The leather bindings are deteriorating, so a dirty burnt-orange dust covers everything and new orange dust forms from the slightest touch.
So, looking at even one cash book takes considerable energy: wrestle it away from its neighbors, hoist it off of the shelf, and gently set it on the floor if too heavy to lift, which was usually the case.
Next, gently flip the cover open, turn a few pages, and determine the year and line.
The first two or three wrestled from the shelf yielded books from the early 1900s. I was looking for the 1879-1881 era.
I got lucky not long into this arduous task. I found 1879. For the Dakota Central work. The odds were stacked against me, yet it worked out. WOOHOO!!
Now…this book couldn’t just be lifted back onto the shelf. I had to heft this monster up so that I could carry it several feet to the well-supplied research table. It is a fantastic set up, well-lit, with plenty of space to work with large ledgers. The one minor exception was that I think the table space was placed at a height that would work perfectly for someone over 6 feet tall. Which makes sense, considering most of their researchers are male and thus the odds are higher that they’d be that tall. I’m a tad over 5’2″. I spent a lot of time that day on my tip-toes. It was worth it.
Looking for Irish, Wells, or other interesting notes
I flipped page by page through the entire book, and found multiple payments made to Charles Wood Irish (noted as C. W. Irish in the ledger). One that was particularly interesting to me was a $200 deposit at the bank in Yankton. Irish had a November 18, 1879 diary entry that he’d made a $150 deposit at that same bank “for the use of the C and NW Ry $50 being company money.” On other dates, he noted that he’d picked up cash so that supplies could be purchased for the crew. It is interesting to see how the First National Bank of Yankton was one of the bank locations trusted during the project to help get funds to Irish as his crew wandered a large region.
In future posts I’ll share other entries, such as what we can learn from some payments to the various contractor companies involved in the construction of the Dakota Central. Other interesting entries involved reimbursement for farm animals killed by trains, including sheep, hogs, cows, even oxen.