Clear Spring, Washington County Maryland 1860s Store Ledger

This is a 1860s store ledger book from Washington County Maryland. The book starts in September 1861 and ends in April 1874. The ledger contains 405 pages of great genealogical and historical information for this part of Maryland, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

It is not known who the original owner of this book was but I was able to learn the approximate location of the original owner by researching some of the people found within its pages. Through my research I was able to tell that the book belonged to someone who lived in or near Clear Spring, Washington County Maryland. I have been told that the Hammet and Ridenour store was located at Clear Springs but it will take more research to confirm that this ledger is from that store.

While I found many of the people listed within the pages of this book lived in or around Clear Spring I also found that many were from the surrounding towns and villages in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Some of the locations that people were from are Clear Spring Maryland, Hagerstown Maryland, Taneytown Maryland, Williamsport Maryland, Funkstown Maryland, Martinsburg West Virginia, and Hedgesville West Virginia.

The book also contains the names of several Civil War Officers that frequented the store. The most interesting Civil War soldier was Captain William Firey. Captain Firey's Company B of Cole's Cavalry spent months operating in the mountains of West Virginia and Western Maryland. Firey's Company as it was known in that section, met with severe losses during the year of 1862. Company B during its service had more than one hundred and seventy-five members killed, wounded or died in prison.

This ledger book is a fantastic one-of-a-kind genealogy resource for the area in and around Clear Spring, Washington County Maryland. If you had ancestors living in Clear Spring or within about 40 miles of Clear Spring you may find your ancestors are in this book. The original scanned ledger pages are also on file; a full page-by-page transcription has not yet been done.