Townsend, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, 1868 Store Ledger Book.

This is an original General Store ledger book that came from Townsend in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. I do not know the name of the store or its exact location in Townsend. The ledger book is a fantastic and unique genealogy resource for this area of Northern Massachusetts. It contains 385 pages starting in May 1868 and ending in Sept 1868. There are over 3850 entries that contain the names of many local people.

The entries list what people bought, how much they paid for the goods, and in more than one entry it notes that the person has died and it is another family member paying the debt. This ledger is a fascinating glimpse into the daily lives of our ancestors in the years just after the Civil War! Many times our ancestors are simply names and dates in a census record or on a grave marker. The kind of information we can find in a book like this is so much more. It brings our ancestors alive. When you see them buying shoes for the children or a new Sunday hat you see them just as they were. Living their lives just as we do today.

The entries are not just for people living in the town itself. Many are farmers and others living in the surrounding countryside. Some are even people from across the border in New Hampshire.

Townsend was first settled in 1676 and was incorporated as a Town on the 29th of June 1732. The first Meeting House was built about 1730 on top of Meeting House Hill. The first mill of the town was built in 1733. During the Civil War many men from Townsend and the surrounding countryside fought with distinction.

This is just a few pages; there are many hundreds more.

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