3 RARE Handwritten Ledgers Fossil Oregon Wild West Hoover & Watson Mercantile

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3 RARE Handwritten Ledgers Fossil Oregon Wild West Hoover & Watson Mercantile :
$405.00

WELCOME TO SALLYS DIARIES:

Well, if you like the old west then thesecertainly are the ledgers for you. I’m from Oregonand am always on the search for handwritten ephemera from this great state but Oregon and West Coastitems are so difficult to come by. For one they are highly collectible andsecondly, the west was still wild and untamed (so to speak) all the way intothe late 1800’s and early 1900’s so it’s a wonder many of these piecessurvived.

The ledgers up for sale today (andplease note my reserve is just to recoup the price I had to pay to keep themtogether) are three very historical pieces from the town of Fossil Oregon whichis located in Eastern Oregon; Wheeler County. It’s about 3 hours from Portland Oregon and 2hours away from Bend Oregonin the rolling foothills of the John Day Basin.Fossil was founded in 1876 as a ranching service and stage stop. The city of Fossil (which only has a population of 470 now) is locatedmidway along the 217 mile “Journey Through Time”-Oregon’s only official cultural and heritagetour route. This route celebrates pristine fossil and geographic resources, OldWest culture and charming small towns. Rich with centuries of history, thisscenic byway tells stories of fortunes made and lost, of Chinese laborers, oftowns boomed and bused, of timber, agriculture, gold miners and pioneersettlers.

The following was taken from Wikipedia…….

You can see the incredible history behindthis little town. Now there are three photos, original ones, that came with theledgers. Then one photo I copied from the web to give you an idea of what Main Street lookedlike back in the day. So the copied one shows the horses and wagons and Ibelieve it’s from the early 1900’s. The other photos, original ones, I’ll getto in a moment.

There are three ledgers in this group andall of them are very large measuring about 9” x 14” and 2” thick. The first onesays “Ledger” on the spine and then on the first page is a stamp that says, “Hoover and Watson Dealersin General Merchandise Fossil Or.” Remember the Thomas Benton Hoover foundedthe town. This ledger has an alphabetized section in the front with hundreds ofnames and after that there are 455 pages, full of handwriting for expenses forthe mercantile. The incredible thing about this ledger is the tin-type phototaped to the top of the first page and under it is written, “Our candidate for Sheriff.” Now thedates for this ledger are from 1884-1886 and I found that the first sheriff forWheeler County was Perry Lewis “Lew” Keeton but that was in 1899 so I’m notsure if this is Lew or not.

The second ledger says “Cash and Sales” onthe edge of the spine and then you can see on the front is stamped, “September19, 1900 – Nov. 1, 1901. K & S.” Inside you’ll find the photo of the insideof the store; the ORIGINAL photo. Then there are a total of 500 pages and allof those pages are filled out with names and the goods each customer bought. Ican’t begin to list all the names here but I did write down some of the goodspurchased, such as: stovepipe, matches, shells, sugar, gloves, overcoat, wheat,thread, calico, coffee, gingham, velvet binding, skin, shoes, cigar, blots,lard, album, library paste, syrup, rice, soap, muslin, candy, gum, wagon, suitand 100’s of more items.

The third ledger says “Cash and Sales” onthe edge of the spine and then you can see on the front is stamped, “K & SJan. 1, 1903 and After” This ledger had some pieces of ephemera stuffed betweenthe pages and the third original photo. It’s a cabinet photo of a man taken ata Portland Oregon studio but no identification. Thisledger has writing up to page 65 then blank up to page 200. There are 14 pagesof writing (200-214) then blank until page 460 and another 40 pages of writingafter that.

The ledgers themselves are in fabulousshape and represent three historical collectible pieces from the old west.

SHIPPING: I can’t ship thesemedia mail as much as I’d like to. So the cheapest way to ship these heavyledgers is use 3 flat rate large boxes. I’ll pay for one of them and that’s howI came up with the shipping cost.