Scanned 1911-1913 Store Ledger for Stonewall, Smith County, Tennessee

Question

While I was visiting in November, I was able to purchase a store ledger for Stonewall, Tennessee, 1911-1913. I have scanned it, and it can be found below. It has amazing details on the purchases by the family. Please remember that the index pages contain more than one letter - e.g. A/B, and sometimes the "first alphabet letter" will be below the 2nd. EG on A/B, it seems the B names come first. Once you locate the page you want, you can easily find it by scrolling, but 400 pages might take a bit, or using "Cntrl+F" and typing in the page number you want.

I am missing page 286 for some reason, so I will check to see if it was missing or if I skipped it. Pages 395-398 are definitely missing from the book.

The editing/scanning was tricky, and before I tackle another project like this will be building a lightbox, as trying to then edit them after resulted in a lot of mixed images. If you can't read something you need, please don't hesitate to let me know, and I'll check the original.

If anyone wants to try to find these people in Stonewall and create profiles for them on WikiTree and tag them.. please do; not sure if I'll ever get to that.

Answer 1

Kristina, thank you so much for purchasing this ledger and then taking the time to scan and post 300+ pages for the Wikitree community. Families will enjoy reading the purchases made by their ancestors. 

It's possible that this ledger was from the Smith Bros. store. Page 392A mentions the name. The store was owned by J. H. Smith and possibly his brother C. W. Smith. Both men have quite a few purchases on the ledger and were noted as Merchants on the 1910 census.

To help connect family members, I transcribed (the best that I could), the ledger index and posted it with the ledger pages. 

Many of the customers lived in the 22nd district of Smith County and can be discovered on the 1910-1920 census records. If I have the chance, I will update the ledger index with Wikitree links, if available.

Comments

Thank you so much for that, it was an amazing journey through it, learned a lot about archival digitizing and picking up a better scanning and lighting system  for the next one.

I first saw it, hummed and hawed, then went back the next day going this has to be shared, not sure in a collection.  Someone knowing their that great grandpa bought crayons, or candy is the richness we look for In this.  Now debating do I keep it, or rehome it to a museum.  I'm hoping to move there for winters in a few years and open an archives/genealogy area, even if a room on my place that's set up

My next project is putting up 400 pages of newspapers from 1895 and later out of Alexandria, DeKalb County.  A local historian there has them on her collection.

The first two issues are up and I'm trying to use them to identify the best way to move forward, the death listings are a must. Unfortunately I'm finding many are not even on find a grave and noted as "Mrs Woods"

The other stories I can identify a few people, as I'm doing one place projects, but the coming and goings not sure how far to take itm

The who was sick are also important as it can help confirm death dates..

One of my Wauford cousins is in these 2 in a debate on "Atonement" , it's near reading his point of view on his religious belief.

I also have permission to post journals from several of the clergy in the 1910-1920 era and have a few up. Luckily in those I can place a lot of people and will be doing traditional indexing.

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For the deaths, maybe you can create an index for them and post it with the newspapers? Also, to save you time scanning, you may want to check to see if the issues weren't already published for free on FamilySearch?

See: https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/472620?availability=Family%20History%20Library

For the store ledger, perhaps contact the Tennessee State Archives to see if they are interested?

Email: ask@tsla.libanswers.com

Thanks again for your contributions!