Ledger "A" and "B"

Double-entry accounting ledger for the full year of 1836, with the earliest entries dated January 1 and the latest December 31. Manuscript entries in a neat, even hand, with amounts recorded in two columns labeled "$" and "cts"; amounts in the cents column are sometimes fractional. Creator unknown, but probably an American apprentice or student of bookkeeping: details of the ledger, including the punny names of some debtors (e.g. Abel Ableman, Conrade Compound, and Robert Retail), the comprehensive variety of goods and services transacted, and the tidiness of its accounting over exactly one year, suggest this volume as a training ledger used to learn and practice bookkeeping, with its entries probably corresponding to exercises posed by a bookkeeping textbook. It was probably also originally accompanied by a training daybook or wastebook. Place names recorded include York, Durham, Wilmington, and Chester, possibly chosen by the textbook publisher for their relevance to both British and American markets.

The ledger is divided into two parts, "Ledger A" which records transactions (debits and credits) and "Ledger B" which records balances. Ledger A is chronologically ordered; Ledger B is alphabetized by persons, with names entered in the order they appear in part A. At the front of each part is a name index, or "Alphabet." Entries dated in left margin, by month, day, and year in Ledger A and by year only in Ledger B. The number in the narrower column to right of the date in part A is the page number on which a cross-entry appeared in another account book, likely a daybook. A daybook was used in conjunction with a ledger, its entries transferred there to create a book of final entry for the year.

Transactions made in cash, bank notes, and commodities. Material goods transacted consist of many varieties of textiles including satin, velvet, and Irish linen, paper, a Walker's Dictionary, wine, sugar, hops, 8 sarcenet hoods, 17 Indian fans, flax, iron, currants, and coal; the year's rent as well as cash lent and borrowed are also recorded.

Many of the fictitious names recorded in this ledger also appear in a ledger purchased by Charles Deakin Sandland from stationer David Davis in Cowbridge, Wales, in approximately 1850. This provenance, as well as the appearance of again ambiguously English or American place names such as Bath, Bristol, and Norwich in the Davis ledger, suggest a British publisher with a trans-Atlantic market for the bookkeeping textbook. The Davis ledger is listed in an inventory of Sandland's library as one of the books brought with him when he emigrated to Australia in 1854. The Peoples Collection Wales maintains a collection of correspondence about the Sandland family which includes the inventory describing the Davis ledger, available at link.