Something special – Deseret Iron Co accounts
Jan 22nd, 2010 by sharbrough
Years ago, when I was working at Footnote, I got a call from a librarian at Southern Utah University. She wondered if we might publish a single roll of microfilm that the library owned. The roll contained the account books of the Deseret Iron Company.
While I said sure, the project didn’t proceed past that point during my tenure there. But this week, the account books of the Deseret Iron Company were published on the footnote site. There are 551 pages, organized by year, and month, and page number. The page numbers are a continuous sequence – 1854 starts on page 1 and 1855 on page 21.
There wasn’t a lot of cash around, and employees were paid on account. These books tell a great deal about pioneer life in the area that later became Cedar City.
I’m not familiar enough with the records or the history to say why the gap exists between 1862 and the final year, 1867. Let’s speculate that the company ceased operation in 1862 and cleared up the books five years later. Making it up is so much easier than research. That’s why 74% of genealogists do it.
Kudos to Footnote and SUU for publishing original images of a unique historical record. I don’t have any pioneer Utah miners in my family tree, but I think it’s the kind of publishing decision that gives the site value.
