Canada, album of drawings and sketches, 1854-56

CANADA

Album of topographical drawings and watercolours of Toronto, Guelph and Lake Simcoe, with maps, sketches, and ephemera, September 1854 to July 1856.

4to (292 x 220mm.), approximately 170 watercolours (including a folding panorama of Toronto), pen and ink drawings, sketches, manuscript and printed maps, and newspaper cuttings, mounted recto and verso on 69 paper leaves, nearly all with ink captions on the mounts, some dated, some drawings and items of printed ephemera loosely inserted, blue papered boards, some wear and tears, a few drawings loose, upper hinge detached, binding somewhat worn, rebacked with white buckram

A rare album of topographical drawings and comic sketches of a traveller depicting rural and city life in Canada in the mid-nineteenth century. The album may have been produced and compiled by a member of the Graham family, who sailed from Liverpool to Canada on board the steamer "Ottawa" in September 1854 and who lived and travelled around Guelph, Toronto and Lake Simcoe for nearly two years before returning to Liverpool on board the screwsteamer "Indian" in July 1856 (a pasted passenger list includes "Mrs Graham, servant, and child", and there is also an invitation from Government House addressed to "Mr & Mrs Graham"). The compiler may also have been related to the Chadwick family who lived at Guelph.

The drawings include views of Ballinard, the Chadwick's house and log houses in Guelph, scenes of forestry, sleigh scenes, Galt Railway Station, principal buildings and animated street and harbour scenes in Toronto, ice cutting, a royal mail sledge, views and ships on Lake Simcoe, plans of Jericho, a land auction, maps of the geology of Canada, and views of Guelph. There are various names of people mentioned in the captions, including George Lefroy, Mr & Mrs Blunt, Mrs Chorley, the Rev. J. MacTavish (a friend and "lately of Islay"), The Govenor General Sir Edmund Head, Capt. Retallack, Farmer Hamilton, Famer and Mrs Dobbin, McGee (his foundry), and the funeral of John T. Arnold.