The Old Town canoe with serial number 50350 is a 16 foot long, CS (Common Sense or middle) grade, Otca model with red western cedar planking, open spruce gunwales, twenty inch spruce decks, spruce thwarts, spruce seats, and a keel. It was built between September, 1917 and May, 1919. The original exterior paint color was dark green. It was shipped on May 16th, 1919 to Duluth, Minnesota. A scan showing this build record can be found by following the link at the attached thumbnail image below.
This scan and several hundred thousand more were created with substantial grants from the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association (WCHA) and others. A description of the project to preserve these records is available at
http://www.wcha.org/ot_records/ if you want more details. I hope that you will join or renew your membership to the WCHA so that services like this can continue. See
http://www.wcha.org/about-the-wcha/ to learn more about the WCHA and
http://store.wcha.org/WCHA-New-Membership.html to join.
It is also possible that you could have another number or manufacturer if this description don't match the canoe. Michael has raised an interesting point about the relative survival rates of AA grade canoes versus the CS grade ones. The chart at
http://www.wcha.org/ot_records/grades.jpg indicates that the CS grade canoes originally outnumbered the AA grade ones by about two to one. A database of the WCHA members' canoes from many years ago described at
http://forums.wcha.org/showthread.php?13053 indicates that wooden canoes have a survival rate of about two percent. However, a close look at the grades reported in that database shows 48% AA grade canoes, 50% CS, and 2% GS. It appears that people take better care of expensive things which is not that surprising. I suspect that the survival rate of Rolls Royce cars is also probably higher than Volkswagens. Feel free to reply here if you have any other questions.
Benson
