Deed Book, Providence, Rhode Island, 1899

Wear and staining to leather, but covers sound. Internally in fine condition. Folio ledger book (16 3/4 x 11 inches; 425 x 278 mm). Manuscript on paper: [2], 570 pages. 226 very finely drawn plot maps, with wash, ranging from small insertions on pages to full-page illustrations. Bound in original ledger leather, gilt, with label of Ackerman Co, Providence, gilt-lettered with title on spine. A superb record of the land deeds related to the development of the Providence & Worcester Rail Road Company [P & WRRC]. The preliminary pages record the sale of a section of land to the Lonsdale Company on 31 July 1871 (the preliminaries are dated 1899). The Lonsdale Co. Mill Railroad was a short branch from the main line of the P & WRRC to the Lonsdale Mills (Lonsdale is a village and historic district in Lincoln and Cumberland, Providence County). What follows are the deeds, with plot maps and names of their owners, from 17 October 1846 to 21 November 1883. A note on a front flyleaf reads: "See Certificate signed by Charles Hatch on the fly leaf of Volume 1 of this series of Deed Books. November 1899. James W. Perkins." Perkins has added another note in pencil on the verso of the front free endpaper: "Plan Book No. 2 referred to in Index od Deeds of P and WRR Co. JWP."

The company was founded in 1844 to build a railroad between Providence, Rhode Island, and Worcester, Massachusetts, and ran its first trains in 1847 - the year after the earliest deed recorded in this plot book. A successful railroad, the P&W subsequently expanded with a branch to East Providence, Rhode Island, and for a time leased two small Massachusetts railroads. Originally operating on a single track, its busy mainline was double-tracked beginning in 1853, following a fatal collision that year in Valley Falls, Rhode Island. The P&W operated independently until 1888, when the New York, Providence and Boston Railroad (NYP&B) leased it. (Inventory #: 409884)