Collections : [University of Michigan William L. Clements Library]

This account book from the apothecary business of Isaac Bartram in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, includes business accounts and numerous references to his family members.

The Isaac Bartram account book contains almost 250 pages of detailed accounts of transactions for pharmaceutical materials, many of which appear to have been the natural products of Bartram Gardens in Philadelphia. Many of the accounts are directed to his relatives, including John Bartram, who is listed for dispersals of cash and for advancing cash to his son James to use for laundry and for his studies under Benjamin Rush. Other family members mentioned are Moses, nephew James Bartram, and niece Ann Bartram.

Isaac Bartram maintained accounts with a large number of customers over the years covered in this volume, including 22 women and many local physicians. Some of the physicians from southeastern Pennsylvania who were mentioned in the account book were Jacob Baker, Samuel Fahnstock, and Jonathan Kearsley.

In addition to plants and plant products, Bartram dealt in glass, salt petre, bottles, pill boxes, knives, ochre and other pigments, and other goods used in the pharmaceutical trade. Four pages at the end of the volume list purchasers of rosewater, most of whom were women.