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.

This collection contains a selection of correspondence, ephemera and photographs primarily with a connection to Windsor/Essex, Chatham-Kent, or Sarnia/Lambton, acquired by Wayne Ray for digitization and addition to his Windfield Photo Archives online project. They are divided into series according to subject: Series I contains images of Chatham’s Dominion Sugar Company sugar beet processing facilities, ca. 1920s (?); Series II contains images of ships and homes on the Sarnia waterfront ca. 1990s; Series III contains late 1990s/early 2000s images of tourist facilities in other southern Ontario places, including inns in Port Severn and Ingersoll, and cruises on the Grand River and Lake Muskoka. Series IV contains correspondence from mid-20th c. Wheatley, including a discussion of 1950s United Church growth, and Series V contains ephemera connected to business, leisure, and religious activities in Windsor and Essex County, ca. 1897-1960s(?).