The collection consists of five volumes relating to the construction of the Delaware Division of the Pennsylvania Canal. Three volumes provide a survey of the location after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers laid out the canal route. They include the bearings of the canal and the amount of land transferred from owners along the route, with an accounting of all structures, orchards, farmlands and other improvements destroyed or damaged by the construction.

A fourth volume is a pocket notebook of surveyor's tables to be used in connection with operating a transit. The fifth volume is a pocket field notebook Watson used between 1830 and 1832, containing a record of local property surveys and work on the canal, along with small land transactions representing right-of-way purchases. The last few pages record a trip through Northwestern New Jersey in the fall of 1832. The itinerary documents visits to Flemington, Schooley's Mountain, Hackettstown, Great Meadows and Belvidere, and a return by way of Easton. It also includes observations on the state of the country, the effect of the Morris Canal, and the examination of a purported silver mine.