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

The Ralph Forrester account book (62 pages) contains the accounts of a Pennsylvania farmer who supplied food to the Continental army during the Revolutionary war. The accounts document agricultural and economic activity in rural Pennsylvania at the end of the 18th century.

The Ralph Forrester account book (62 pages) contains the accounts of a Pennsylvania farmer who supplied food to the Continental army during the Revolutionary war.

• Sales of livestock (horses, pigs, and cows), meat (beef, bacon, mutton, and veal), and produce (cabbages, Indian corn, rye, flower, buckwheat, flax, potatoes, turnips, and hay).
• Payments, both in cash and commodities, for labor (chopping wood, making shingles, splitting rails, fencing, harvesting, hulling grains, "ditching", and cider making).
• Receipts for food, household equipment, textiles, and other supplies (shoes, whiskey, clothes, guns, linen, bonnets, tobacco, lime, bricks, and nails).

The book contains accounts for Forrester, many of his family members, and several local laborers, doctors, and farmers. The detailed and numerous accounts provide historical evidence for a late-18th century rural economy, where work was exchanged for cash and goods. Many entries document the role of women in the labor force. Forrester lists payments to women for doing house work; making clothes, handkerchiefs, and yarn; farming chores, such as planting seeds; and nursing the sick.

• Documents for supplying livestock for General Nathanael Greene and Captain Josiah Hait of Colonel Spencer's Division, February 19, [1782?], (page 2).
• Documents for grain sales to feed Lieutenant Colonel William Hull's horses, 1791, (page 17).
• Documents for Forrester's partnership with Joseph Clark (page 16).
• Accounts for Tamer Gregory, Forrester's mother (page 34).
• A table for annual grain production for the Forrester farm from 1785-1788 (page 37).

This collection is made up of correspondence and notarized documents related to the financial affairs of Philadelphia merchant Robert Morris.

This collection (10 items) is made up of correspondence and legal documents related to the Philadelphia merchant Robert Morris. The first item is a personal letter from Tadeusz Kościuszko, who expressed deep thanks for an unspecified favor (July 14, 1784). Five notarized protests (February 13, 1797-May 5, 1798) and one promissory note (December 10, 1794) pertain to John Nicholson, who failed to deliver on several promissory notes endorsed by Robert Morris. Morris wrote to Nicholson on July 5, 1799, discussing his frustration with a man named Ely ("if he continues obdurate, vengeance shall become the order of the day") and describing successful efforts to lessen the effects of a yellow fever outbreak. The final two items are accounts between Robert Morris and John Conrad Hottinger (December 1798) and a letter to Morris from Lovett Bell of Hyde County, North Carolina, who requested that Morris pay him the $500 he was owed (January 25, 1803).

This collection contains four items pertaining to traders and land speculators William Trent and George Croghan's finances and land dealings in western Pennsylvania.

This collection contains four items pertaining to traders and land speculators William Trent and George Croghan's finances and land dealings in western Pennsylvania. Please see the Detailed Box and Folder Listing for descriptions of the individual items.