This fonds consists of a narrow, hardbound ledger book containing handwritten entries of accounts held by customers of an unknown merchant identified as “E.H” (possibly E. Hall), 1826-1831. E.H. was likely based in the vicinity of present-day Windsor, Ontario. The ledger presents itemized lists of goods purchased and amounts owing or paid, under each customer’s name. Roughly two-thirds of the volume is unused. E.H.’s customers came primarily from Essex and Kent counties and Detroit, Michigan, but also elsewhere along the upper Great Lakes, including Drummond Island. Both male and female names are present, and some customers’ occupations are given as well, including blacksmith, miller, distiller, cooper, cook, merchant, labourer, crevier, regimental sergeant, ship’s carpenter, seaman, sailor, engagé, servant woman, and inhabitant. Many customers are French-Canadian; one may have been Black, and another Indigenous.

This fonds contains documents and images related to nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European settlement in Essex and Kent counties. These include an Irish immigrant’s personal journal of settling in Essex County with his two sisters (1850). The journal primarily details Jasper Golden’s travels (Atlantic crossing, St. Lawrence River, Quebec, Kingston, Niagara, Buffalo, Detroit, Windsor) but also includes later details about time spent in Malden, Anderdon, and the now-lost port of Albertville (near Kingsville). There are also official records of infrastructure and property in Howard Township (1909), and organizational and research material related to an effort to preserve the Walker family’s rare fieldstone-clad Kent County farmhouse as a historic site. (David and Ann Walker were Scottish immigrants who settled in Harwich Township, Kent County in 1845, with their original grant of farmland remaining in the family until 1972.) The fonds also includes approximately 448 slides depicting pre-1900 homes, buildings, furnishings, objects, weapons, and equipment in Kent and Essex counties, from a Canada Council-funded project to document these artifacts. There is also a short history of Buxton, Ontario, and slides of a memorial to Shawnee chief Tecumseh.