Slate pencil and tablet

Slate pencils and tablets like these were commonly used to work without wasting precious paper. These artifacts among were 70,000 others were recovered from the block on the northeast corner of Simcoe Street and Adelaide Street West, in Toronto. The excavation was conducted by Archaeological Services Inc. (ASI) in 2007. Robert Sympson Jameson, who was appointed the Attorney General of Upper Canada in 1833, resided in one of the houses along with his wife, the author Anna Brownell Murphy (1794-1860), better known as Anna Jamieson, the celebrated early chronicler of Upper Canada!