Essex County Massachusetts 1772 to 1780 Student Work Book and Store Ledger

This is a great little hand made book from Essex County Massachusetts. It started out its long life as a student's work book back in the 1750s or 1760s. The first pages contain lovely hand written notes on how to addition and subtraction. There is also an interesting lesson on how to add money. It is such an interesting look into pre Revolutionary America to see this young student's notes on the addition of Pounds and Shillings, Pence and Farthings. And in a lovely reminder that children are the same now as they were over 200 years ago the book contains some rather disparaging remarks about other classmates.

After this book was no longer needed for school it went on to be used for a store or maybe a farm ledger book. Paper was expensive in the 1700s so people would re use a book until it was completely filled. It is common to see books from the 1700 and 1800 completely filled with notes. People would cram every square inch often writing sideways and upside down just so they could make the book last one more day.

The first entry with a date is for the year 1772 and like most of the entries in this book concern money and goods changing hands. People are buying or selling goods like hats, shoes, flax, molasses, ribbon. There are also entries concerning work done for the owner of the book by local people. The entries vary in the amount of info contained in them. Some are simply a line or two others are long lists covering many months.

It is not known who the original owner of this book was and there was no location given. I was only able to learn the location of the original owner by researching 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 Salem, Essex County Massachusetts.

The original scanned ledger pages are also on file; a full page-by-page transcription has not yet been done.