Moodyville Sales Book
The Moodyville store served everyone from the mill and its employees to company logging camps, local inhabitants, residents of the whole region and transient shipping crews. It carried food, supplies, tools, clothing and even some luxuries. The company store accounts mention supplying men who sold logs to the mill. Even George Black, the butcher, was on the books as a logging contractor. The local Native people, for their part, came up with a product to sell to the mill: dogfish oil. Loggers would put this oil on their skid roads to make the logs run more easily. A man with a pail of it would walk ahead of the oxen or horses pulling the logs and give each skid a brush. The oil had a strong smell, especially if it had been in the sun for some time, and bears would come out of the woods to lick the skids.
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WHAT
This sales book recorded financial transactions and is one of two surviving ledgers — the other recorded wages — which must have been preserved carefully over the years, as they are in good condition.
WHERE
This sales book was used by the Moodyville mill store. It recorded all kinds of financial transactions related to the community and its mill.
WHEN
This ledger records a period of time from October 30, 1875, to the end of that year, and another from December 1878 to December 1879.
WHO
This ledger was donated to the North Vancouver Museum and Archives by the Cates family, who have been in the Burrard Inlet tugboat business since the Moodyville era.
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