the french ledger book

Thanks for sharing the story and books. They were a great find! I agree things were once MUCH easier. I dont know why we have decided to make life so complicated.

I also do appreciate all the documents of my late mother in law.I inherited a savings book indicating a drawing on 16th December 1944 (imagine the war fronts were already in the city!!)surely she thought cash would be better in hand than savings in a bank.love Dorka http://www.dorottyaudvar.co.hu

Sharon, I'm just caught up in the penmanship alone. I've been trying my hand at calligraphy because, sadly, even the cursive they taught us in grade school seems to be a lost art. I love this reminder of a time when details like that were a little more important. I'm wondering if there's a story to be created through the little bits of life left behind on those pages? XO

Oh my goodness – what beautiful books – I love the handwriting! And, yes, live did seem simpler back then.

The script is so beautifully written. It looks like it is written with a pen that uses a cartridge of ink. I think while some things seemed easier and people's needs were simpler back then the work was hard. When I think of having to wash clothes by hand, make bread everyday, cook over a hearth, make my own clothes it's a wonder people lived as long as they did. 🙂 I wonder how long I would have lived?

So beautifully written. I found myself wondering about the trip to Paris – which hotel did they stay in, what did they have for breakfast, was it business or pleasure? And what was the 50 centimes for "Maman"? More questions than answers! What a wonderful peek into a bygone age, a century ago.

Such well-written ledgers!
Life was simpler, and few things were needed for living. Now, we have more cash, and we also have more wants.

I could get lost in wondering about these!

I just have to tell you that I absolutely love to read your blog! I try to limit the time I spend online as so much time just disappears before you realize but I must always visit your country home! You are so inspiring with so much beauty in your home and garden! I have decided that I must finally learn to speak french as it is such a beautiful language! Thank you for sharing just the perfect amount of your life! Cheers, Colette

Such beautiful handwriting! You can rarely see anything like it today I am afraid. But then, letter writing and notes and hand bookkeeping are hardly in style anymore.

The script is so lovely. People used to take pride in a nice signature and a good writing hand. I treasure bits and pieces of things handed down in my family. Sometimes, other than the rare instance of a letter or postcard, the only writings in a family are entries in a Bible, such as baptisms, marriages, death. A charming tradition in the early 20th century, at least with my female relatives now long since gone, was the keeping of small autograph books when a preteen/teen, exchanged between friends, nothing really to do with school but more like comments one might pen in a greeting card. Your ledgers tell a story. Amazing how some things survive the years of a family if protected and properly stored. A little glimpse into history

(continuation..)….Gone with the wind (to coin a phrase) were the days when the ledgers contained records of purchasing sixteen wagonloads of hay or twenty bolts of cloth for "servants" (no one ever used the word "slave", even when they were recording the sale or purchase of one….rather as my grandmother's generation, even when they had ten black folks doing EVERYTHING around and in the house every single day, never used the word "servant"; such black folks were euphemistically referred to as "the help").
In any case, it's a bit saddening to note that, in the post war years (and lasting right up until the first world war era) the "store" ledgers are absolutely filled with the names of all the Finest & First Families of this state (this was the capital until that was moved to Raleigh in the 1830's). Roulhacs, Hamiltons, Strudwicks, Camerons, Webbs, Nashes (basically, every name that's associated with one or more of the big mansions or plantations in this area and/or adorns the fifty or so historical markers on the main street) all came here to buy markedly-measly, "just enough for a week", little purchases…and sometimes trading for them.
All in all?….it's obvious, going through these ledgers, that anyone who'd HAD money had lost it all. Another very interesting fact (obvious if, like me, you're attuned & trained to tease-out these facts)??….during the reconstruction years, it appears that the majority of customers were "MR. Roulhac" or "MR. Nash"….stopping by to pick up a needle, some blue thread, 4 ounces of sugar, and a pound of white flour.
My assumption is that (and there's historical precedents for this)is that the men of the "fine" families weren't, no matter what, going to let folks see their wives going around doing errands and chores previously done by slaves….or haggling over pennies when they used to be rich. I grew up hearing of one well-known Confederate general (and this is a quite validated anecdote) who, having been among those who lost the war, took to doing all the household's washing, despite his having a wife and five daughters. He was just NOT going to let the ladies of his family be seen standing over a washtub in the yard. Just for record, he eventually shot himself in the head and was buried, wrapped in a confederate flag. I don't know what happened to his wife and daughters (this family is one of the few that ISN'T related to mine) following THAT final incident.
In any case, the ledgers shift somewhat between about 1900 and the 1920's….when the "store" (which is now the back kitchen wing) was run by two spinster aunts who lived with their brother's family here. I gather that the "store" basically supported the whole family. After the 1920's (a period of wild prosperity compared to what had preceeded it for fifty years following the war), the store was moved into an actual building on the main street, where it was successfully and profitably operated (by the grandfather of the 87 year old Webb who came here for lunch last month) until World War II.
So, all these ledgers, instead of being thrown out as rubbish fifteen years ago, now sit in the library (not that they were ever kept there when the family still owned this house)…..and there's quite a lot to be gleaned from them.
All you have to do is read between the lines, so to speak……but then I expect you, having spent plenty of time going through old monogrammed bridal sheets, engraved christening cups from 1890, and all the multitudinous things that folks just throw away ("Who would want this old stuff? Who knows who it belonged to?"), already know that.
thanks for the obviously evocative posting. I'll send you a photograph of the ledgers by private email.

Wow, I really enjoyed reading about David Terry's plantation ledgers! It's often a big mystery as to what happened to many of the grand landowners/wealthy people after the American Civil War; lands were confiscated, lost to the tax man; gracious mansions had been burned to the ground by Union soldiers, American fighting against American (a very sad chapter in U.S. history). The gentry of the American South were people who indeed had others to do their daily work for them and their lives were quite coddled. Because so much was burned, many written histories of families were lost. In my own family, reportedly an old trunk with family memorabilia of this era existed into the 1940s having made its way to California, only to have disappeared amid much accusation and blame…so my Southern/ancestral info is sketchy and instead told only as an oral history.

I learned that my great-great grandfather's call to the Confederacy was "bought" so that he could instead go to Europe and study. He came home after years abroad, post-war, not to his childhood home and the only way of privileged life he'd ever known, but to one for which he was completely unprepared. His own son was reduced to hardscrabble farming and died a hopeless alcoholic, although he was not an unintelligent man. His daughter, my grandmother, a noble and patrician woman who found herself in the role of "mother" to the family at age 16 (when my great-grandfather's wife died in childbirth), strapped her mother's infant to her back and picked cotton in the fields til her hands bled, slowly going insane by middle age with the stress of an impossibly difficult youth. So, it was three generations of which I'm aware who simply couldn't cope with "rich to poor"–knowing what they'd had, and what they lost–when the Confederacy fell and the Old South changed forever. Some got over it, they survived, as David details of his former homeowners' swing from a pampered life to one of storekeeping. Others, like my ancestors, apparently didn't have a clue how to reinvent themselves. It is indeed the non-fiction version of the famous American novel/film, GONE WITH THE WIND. I so wish I had something, anything to substantiate the stories of my ancestors so that I could understand them better.

To me, David's ledgers are a treasure and so important to keep with that house! What a serendipitous series of events precipitated those historical books finding their way back where they belonged.

Sharon, with your newfound ledgers, there's a story in there for you to pen, as you're a very good one to weave a tale!

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