Women in Ledgers (Women)

Genealogy researchers do not often examine small business ledgers containing incredible information about our female ancestors (and sometimes children). We’ll talk about why ledgers can be invaluable to your research – there is an incredible amount of genealogically leverageable material to be found in ledgers. You can learn so much about your family, the neighborhood, other local business proprietors, and so much more through these records. Many examples of women documented in ledgers will be included.  It is a rare surviving small business where women are not listed.  Even hatters & tailors (male-focused businesses) list women as they purchase items for sons.

Check out ledgers if you need a resource rich in FAN club info. The barter system created a web of relationships involving many in the community. Store, business (e.g., hotels, livery, stable, distillery, blacksmith, etc.), and health-related (e.g., physician, insane asylum, etc.) ledgers can link family members and provide many interesting details invaluable to your family history narrative. Relationships are sometimes noted – e.g., Tom, son of William. Enslaved people (and location) are sometimes called out in physician’s ledgers as they were treated. A livery ledger might note Deaths or weddings as a horse is rented. Distillery ledgers show everyone seemed to buy whisky – including preachers and physicians.

Depending on where your ancestors lived and when different goods were bought and sold at the local stores. Different industries (e.g., naval stores) proliferated in select communities, and ledgers reflect such.

Free persons of color and enslaved are often mentioned as well — individuals often underrepresented in official government documents. Ledgers are personal and intimate; they include everyday little details about your family that will be found nowhere else. A ledger just may poke a hole in that brick wall you’ve been staring at.