Horatio Coe Notebook, 1892

Horatio B. Coe came west from Connecticut in 1849 and taught in Geneva Lake a year. In 1864 he enlisted in the Civil War. After the war, he came to Harvard and was a principal of the Harvard public schools for 4 years. He left several times but came back to Harvard time and again. His father established Derby Academy in Connecticut and made several important surveys, among them a survey of Housatonic River for a proposed canal, presumably fostering Horatio’s interest in surveying.

Content: On the front cover is “H.B. Coe, Harvard, Ill. Jan. 1/[18]92, Minutes & platting of old surveys.” This is like a lesson book on surveying and contains survey “problems” and instructions, like the use of tangents to find unknown angles, and a glossary. But it also contains a plat of Coon Island and notes on surveying a meander on Coon Island, minutes of a meander line around a hill in Sec. 17 T 45 N, R 9 E (very eastern McHenry Township), and notes on a survey of an island hill near the mouth of the Nippersink.

Conservation Treatment: Front cover is loose. Treatment includes mending for stabilization purposes only, reattaching loose pages, lifting the adhered page and re-attaching it with wheat paste, surface cleaning, repairing the cover and re-attaching it to the text block, and non-aqueous deacidification. Infill the areas of loss to the boards with Japanese tissue.