Yesterday I went to the California State Library in Sacramento to look at a variety of Rancho Chico ledgers. I had no idea that there were so many! I only wanted ledgers from 1865-1868 because I wanted to see if I could find anything that related to the building of Bidwell Mansion. They gave me eight huge heavy ledgers on a cart, and another eight smaller day books from the Bidwell store.

I don’t have a good grasp of the difference between blotters, day books, ledgers, and journals (in the bookkeeping sense). And John Bidwell was running a large enterprise, with income and expenses from the flour mill, the lumber company, the Chico & Humboldt Wagon Road, and various aspects of the ranch — livestock, dairy, orchards, etc. It was tricky for me to get my head around.

The most useful one for my purpose was the one you see at the top of the page, Journal F, which listed transactions from September 1863 to December 1867. Expenses for the building of Bidwell Mansion were listed as “New Residence.” It’s going to take me quite a while to go through the photos I took and analyze the data. Here is just one–

On July 7, 1865, Bidwell spent $2.50 for 2 yards of wire cloth for the Mansion from Baker & Hamilton, a supplier of hardware in Sacramento and San Francisco.

Toward the end of the day I went back to the store blotters. They didn’t have anything to do with my project, so I had set them aside at first, but I find it so fascinating to see what people were buying in the 1860s and how much things cost. For instance, eggs were selling for 25 cents a dozen. I could look at those books all day. Finally my daughter had to drag me away so that we could get going on the freeway before rush hour traffic set it.

Just for instance– here we have Major Hancock buying a chopping axe for $2, a Chinese man named Ah Jake stocking up on rice, brandy, and matches, and getting a pair of overalls and 2 pairs of socks, and a Mrs. Marriott doing her daily shopping for coffee, tea, nutmeg, candles, matches, and beans and spending a total of $3.88. I don’t know who any of these people are, but they were living in Chico one hundred and sixty years ago.