Original 1865 ledger from Hastings Mill to be auctioned
Credit to Author: John Mackie| Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2020 19:27:45 +0000
Most people think Vancouver started in Gastown. But the early city actually sprang up a few blocks east, at the foot of Dunlevy Avenue.
That was where Capt. Edward Stamp decided to build a lumber mill in 1865. Incredibly, Stamp’s accounting ledger for the mill still exists, 155 years later. And on Feb. 29 it will go up for sale at an All Nations Stamp and Coin online auction.
“I view this as a foundational document for the B.C. forest industry and for the city of Vancouver,” said Brian Grant Duff of All Nations Stamp and Coin. “It’s Edward Stamp’s accounting journal from 1865 to 1869, listing out all his expenses for his English investors establishing lumber mills on Vancouver Island and the first main lumber mill in the Vancouver area.”
Pioneer Vancouverites called it Stamp’s Mill, but the ledger shows the official name was the British Columbia and Vancouver Island Spar Lumber and Sawmill Co. Ltd. Stamp left the mill in 1869 after a dispute with investors and it was sold and renamed Hastings Mill in 1870. (It closed in 1930.)
Closeup of the top of the first page of Capt. Edward Stamp’s ledger.
The ledger is written in longhand, perhaps by Stamp himself. It begins in February 1865, when Stamp was raising money for the mill in Britain. It says he travelled from London to Holland, Liverpool and Glasgow before setting sail for Victoria.
It cost 116 pounds and three shillings to cross the ocean, which rises to 140 pounds, 16 shillings and eight pence if you include his European travels. At an exchange rate of $4.85-per-pound sterling, that worked out to $683, although it’s unclear whether that’s Canadian or American.
Stamp paid himself $727.50 every quarter, or $2,910 per annum. But at year-end he gave himself a bonus, such as $2,170.75 in December 1865. According to an online inflation calendar, the $4,270.75 he made in 1865 is the equivalent of $67,329.55 today.
Capt. Edward Stamp, circa 1860s.
A Stamp biography by the late historian and archivist William Kaye Lamb says that Stamp was an Englishman who first sailed to the Pacific Northwest in 1857, journeying to Puget Sound to load lumber for Australia.
A year later he started an importing business in Victoria, which was booming after the Fraser River Gold Rush. In 1860-61 he founded B.C.’s first big export mill in what became Port Alberni, but left the mill in 1863 after a dispute with the owners.
Two years later he was able to raise 100,000 pounds in Britain for a mill in Burrard Inlet. His first choice was near Lumbermen’s Arch in Stanley Park, which had long been the site of a Musqueam and Squamish village: χʷay̓χʷəy̓ (in hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓) or X̱wáy̓x̱way (in Sḵwx̱wú7mesh).
But the tides proved too strong, so Stamp moved his mill to the foot of Dunlevy, a block east of Main Street. After some equipment problems, it was up-and-running by summer 1867.
The ledger is an accounting book, so a lot of the entries are fairly dry. But some stand out, such as the $500 the mill paid for a planing machine on Dec. 31, 1867, and the $130 it paid for two stoves for a grist mill.
On Feb. 29, 1868, there’s an entry for “one log” for $2.75. There are several entries for payments to “Indian labour” at the mill and on the steamer Isabel, which Stamp owned.
Detail from Capt. Edward Stamp’s ledger showing payments to colonial B.C. Gov. Frederick Seymour.
There are also several substantial entries labelled “Cash for Governor Seymour” in 1869. They probably aren’t bribes, they’re probably payments for logging rights. The last one is dated March 1, which is three months before the colonial governor died at Bella Coola while sailing up the coast.
Stamp didn’t live long, either, dying on Jan. 20, 1872, after suffering a heart attack in England, where he had gone to raise money for a salmon-packing plant. He was only 57.
Grant Duff has estimated the value of Stamp’s ledger at $1,000, but it will probably sell for a lot more. It comes from the family of the legendary B.C. collector Gerald Wellburn, who probably obtained it from an early Victoria law firm, Drake and Jackson, that closed in the 1930s.
The Feb. 29 auction — the last day of a leap year — also includes a medal for a soldier who fought in the Riel Rebellion and a letter from poet Pauline Johnson. It’s the 1,250th All Nations Stamp and Coin auction, so Grant Duff has placed several historically important B.C. items in the sale.
‘British Columbia Toothpicks’ on car at Hastings Sawmill, circa 1893. Vancouver ArchivesAM54-S4-: Mi P6.2
Hastings Mill, far left, in a bird’s-eye-view map originally published in The Vancouver World in 1898.
This 1872 photo of Hastings Mill is reputed to be the earliest photo of what became the city of Vancouver. It’s now in the collection of the Hastings Mill Museum in Kitsilano. The museum was built in 1865 as the store for the Hastings Mill, which makes it the oldest building in Vancouver. (Les Bazso/PNG)
List of lumber mills in B.C. in 1867, from the Pacific Coast Business Directory.