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Start Over You searched for: Subjects Barter. Remove constraint Subjects: Barter. Formats Ledgers (account books) Remove constraint Formats: Ledgers (account books)
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Collection

Culpeper County (Va.) account book, 1859-1864 (majority within 1860-1862)

39 pages (1 volume)

An unidentified farmer in Culpeper County, Virginia, kept this 39-page account book between late 1859 and June 21, 1864. Thirty-four pages of ledger entries show a variety of men and women purchasing farm goods such as corn, meal, flour, beef, bacon, and other products. In return, his customers were credited through unspecified, skilled, and unskilled labor; cash; and goods such as farm implements. Laborers, for example, sowed, thrashed, raked, and stacked wheat; mowed; cut oats; and heeled, capped, halfsoled, pegged, nailed, and vamped shoes and boots. At least one entry for shoe repair appears to be for enslaved persons' shoes. The keeper of the accounts also rented out a house and garden for $25.00 per year, to Miss E. Benear in 1861 and French Martin in 1862.

An unidentified farmer in Culpeper County, Virginia, kept this 39-page account book between December 31, 1860, and June 21, 1864. Thirty-four pages of ledger entries show a variety of men and women purchasing farm goods such as corn, meal, flour, beef, bacon, and other products. In return, his customers were credited through unspecified, skilled, and unskilled labor; cash; and goods such as farm implements. Laborers, for example, sowed, thrashed, raked, and stacked wheat; mowed; cut oats; and heeled, capped, halfsoled, pegged, nailed, and vamped shoes and boots. At least one entry for shoe repair appears to be for enslaved persons' shoes. The keeper of the accounts also rented out a house and garden for $25.00 per year, to Miss E. Benear in 1861 and French Martin in 1862.

Collection

John Wilson ledger, 1794-1816

1 volume, with enclosure

The James Wilson ledger is a volume of approximately 660 pages, made up of accounts for individuals and corporations, mostly in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, between 1794 and 1816. The collection also includes about 50 small items, mostly receipts relating to Wilson's business, that were originally enclosed in the ledger.

Wilson divided the ledger into three sections, for which he hand-numbered the pages. In the third section, beginning around 1802, he not only listed the names of his customers, but also frequently recorded their residences or occupations. Women tended to be identified as "daughter of," "wife of," or "widow of" a male relative.

Wilson's customers occupied a spectrum of social statuses. Many of the patrons were listed as farmers or artisans, but the ledger also includes accounts for professionals and gentleman as well as newly freed African Americans, household servants, and apprentices. Most of these customers seemed to reside in the towns of Lebanon, Bethlehem, and Kingwood, in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, but Wilson also traded with merchants from Trenton and Philadelphia.

In the earliest entries, dating from 1794, Wilson seems to have traded mostly in wines and spirits, including whisky, spruce beer, port, sherry, rum, cider, and claret. Most of his early customers paid in cash or "bottles returned." Further in the ledger, Wilson's sales broaden to include household goods (chiefly tea, coffee, and sugar), fabric, and clothing. In return, he received services and goods, as well as cash.

This collection also consists of approximately 50 small items, mostly receipts, at one time enclosed in the ledger. Items of note include 2 contracts, dated 1807, for schoolmaster James Hill, an undated note addressed to "Mrs. Wilson" from Theodosia Coxe about household goods, and some basic sketches in the front and end papers of the ledger. An index of the approximately 100 accounts listed under women's names may be found in the control file.

Collection

Josiah Morse account book, 1846-1856, 1876

152 pages (1 volume)

Reverend and physician Josiah Morse of Stewartstown, New Hampshire, kept this account ledger between 1846 and 1854. The entries are largely for medical services, treatments, and medicines for clientele in Stewartstown and other nearby locations. In addition, Morse occasionally took in boarders, rented out his cutter and gig, and received subscription payments for his services as a Congregational minister. Clients paid with cash, skilled services, labor, foodstuffs, and other goods. Laid into the volume are two pages of accounts for travel, room, board, medicine, washing, postage, life insurance, and sundries for the period of June 1, 1850, to June 5, 1851, paid by the Marquette Iron Company for Dr. Morse's year of service as physician and minister at Marquette, Michigan.

Reverend and physician Josiah Morse of Stewartstown, New Hampshire, kept this account ledger between April 22, 1846, and 1854. The entries are largely for medical services, treatments, and medicines for clientele in Stewartstown and other nearby locations. In addition, Morse occasionally took in boarders, rented out his cutter and gig, and received subscription payments for his services as a Congregational minister. Clients paid with cash, skilled services, labor, foodstuffs, and other goods.

Josiah Morse's accounts include a wide range of medicinal treatments, such as valerian, opium, morphine, paregoric, "powders", various compounds and liniments, pills, pulmonary elixirs, emetics, salts, bitters, "Indian Hemp", potash, squills, iodide, fetid gum, soda, tart acid, gum arabic, cough drops, "Scotch Emp", calomel, pink root and senna, seneka, quinine digitalis, cream tartar, rosemary, asafoetida, anodyne elixir, Irish moss, licorice, cathartic, cough syrup, and camphor.

Among the procedures utilized by Dr. Morse were cupping, dressing, vaccinating, setting limbs, lancing, extracting teeth, bleeding, applying liniments, and addressing a leg bitten by a dog (page 70).

Josiah Morse's customers were largely Stewartstown area residents, but he also treated people from nearby Canaan (Vt.), Clarksville (N.H.), Pittsburg (N.H.), Columbia (N.H.), Concord (Vt.), and Lemington (Vt.). Dr. Morse received payment in cash, foodstuffs, manufactured goods, and skilled labor. Patients supplied him with carpentry and wheelwright labor (page 14), the use of an oxen wagon and team (page 35), wood chopping, cutter repair, mason work (page 46), cheese, strawberries, oats, hay, attendance on his pig (page 36), pumpkins (page 38), house cleaning, maple sugar, blankets, baskets, quicksilver, milk, cloth, ginger, ribbon, lamp oil, tea, thread, nails, alcohol, "goods at Cooley's Store", and sundry articles.

Dr. Morse paid weekly board for his daughter Fanny between July 1847 and October 1849 (see pages 54, 63, 85, 93, for example). One lengthy account is with the "Meeting House Company," for planning, framing, squaring timber, shingling, labor, laying chimney, lime mortar, and boarding (page 77).

Laid into the volume are two pages of accounts for travel, room, board, medicine, washing, postage, life insurance, and sundries for the period of June 1, 1850, to June 5, 1851, paid by Amos Harlow of the Marquette Iron Company for Dr. Morse's services as physician and minister at Marquette, Michigan. Other laid-in items include a partially printed summons for an unpaid debtor, a signed subscribers' petition to hire Josiah Morse as preacher in Stewartstown, May 13, 1846; and a letter from A. Smalley of the State Medical Society, March 27, 1854, requesting information on any form of medical schools in Morse's town/county.