Nutter Journal - Physical Description

Before I dive into the content of Jacob Nutter's Journal, I would like to provide a physical description of the notebook.  Here is a scan of the outer cover.

As can be seen, it was in pretty bad shape.  However, onsidering that no special care had been taken to preserve this book it's amazing that is in as good a shape as it is.  The book currently consists of 88 handwritten pages.  I say currently, because it is evident that a few of the pages have unfortunately been lost.  The pages are quite fragile and it was a bit of a decision whether to attempt to scan them.  In the end, it seemed that scanning was the best way to preserve this historical document and my aunt and I spent the better part of day scanning every page.

I noticed an interesting feature by holding the book so that light could shine through a page.  Each page had a watermark.  I made a sketch as well as I could of the watermarks and include scans of them here.

 

The Britannia-style watermark was on one page and the F&T water mark on the facing page.  I have done some research into these marks as I understand you can determine when and where the paper was manufactured.  I had no luck in finding this exact watermark but I did find similar ones from the mid to late 1700's in England.

When I hold this book I am instantly transported back to the time that it was written by its original owners and begin to imagine life at Mill Prison and life on the Alliance.  Amazing!