By Elaine Taylor

Our resident genealogical sage, Janice Abercrombie, recently alerted me to the existence of the ledger books from the store of Thomas Partridge in Hanover County.  The store ledger from 1734-1756 was transcribed and published in 1985 and 86 in the Virginia Genealogical Society Quarterly. (I’ll paste  below the accounts of my ancestors from Louisa,  Cornelius and John Dabney, just to whet your appetite!)  You’ll find in the ledger the name of almost everyone in  Louisa County between 1730-1750s.   The Quarterly is available online for those of you who have a subscription to Ancestry.com.  Go to the card catalogue to find the journal and then search for your ancestor in just that publication.  Janice was also kind enough to donate her collection of the Quarterly to the Sargeant Museum. (please make an appointment if you’d like to research them at louisahistory@verizon.net)

By the way, Janice has transcribed some of the third series of of these ledgers and they will be appearing in the Louisa County Historical Society Magazine over the next few years.  If you are not a member of the Society, please join and receive these issues as they are published.

The article in the Virginia Genealogical Quarterly describes the ledgers this way:

“If the Partridge Store stock may justly be taken as typical of early retailing, any notion of the Virginia frontier as an isolated, homespun community is dispelled. For grooming, there were razors and combs, and for adults and children there was a remarkable variety of hats, gloves, hose, garters, buttons (in metal, horn, and mother-of-pearl to sew on coats, shirts, vests, and sleeves), buckles (in silver, steel, and colors for shoes and for knees), handkerchiefs, ribbons, caps, and wallets. . . For the kitchen there were pewter plates and basins, china, knives and forks, frying pans, funnels, pots and pot hooks, brass kettles, meal sifters, egg flasks, nut crackers, bottles, water pails, and jugs. Hams and cheeses were for sale at the store and to wash them down, rum, beer, cider, and tea. For the cook there was sugar in loafs, single and double refined, salt, pepper, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and all-spice. For the household, Mr. Partridge sold bed cords, blankets, rugs, carpets, chamber pots, candlesticks, pictures, mirrors, chests, and brass locks. For the users of tobacco there were pipes and snuff boxes, and for the affluent a Japanese tobacco box was available . . . The farmer could buy hoes, reapers, axes, sheep shears, butchering knives, and cabbage seed, and among the tools available were saws, hammers, augers, gimlets, and chisels, besides nails which sold in great quantities in size 3 to 10 d…

. . . As to rum, it was so heavily consumed in St Paul’s Parish as to make it doubtful there was little more than a vestige of religious or social restraint on its use. The horse races, fairs, shooting matches, and bowling tournaments mentioned are likely to have been occasions of considerable revelry, so much so as to make one wonder if the monotonies of frontier life have been stressed at the expense of its lighter side.”

My ancestor Cornelius Dabney had an ongoing account at Partridge’s store.  Here are a few highlights from entries to his account:  on September 17, 1737 for 1 pair of women’s shoes, 1 pair of red heel ditto. (Red-heeled shoes were the height of fashion after Louis XIV made a law in France that only those accepted at the royal court could wear red-heeled shoes. Even in the colonies, it was unacceptable for anyone other than gentry to wear them.  To be ‘well-heeled’ has long meant to be of good lineage!) In December of 1737, he bought 25 pounds of sugar and 7 gallons of rum.  In January he purchased 4 hats and on March 28, 1738 there is a summary of his bill including 1 pair of girls gloves, rum lost at nine Pins, and 1 pair of mourning buckles (for shoes).  Notation indicates payments on Cornelius’ account made by ‘your son John Dabney’ and another by ‘your son William’.   Later that year he purchased another pair of women’s red heeled shoes (we have to wonder to what occasions Sarah Jennings wore so many classy shoes!) 1 pair of womens wash gloves, writing paper, 1 pair of men’s shoes, and more rum.  On July 19 of that year, one pair of red-heeled shoes was returned for credit.

Cornelius’ sons made purchases of shot and powder, rum and shoes. William, the oldest, also purchases a Bible and there is a notation on June 1 of 1737 that cash was paid for him by his father at ‘the Shoot match”.

Fascinating stuff for those of us who like bringing our family tree to life with a little ACCURATE social history!

Elaine Taylor at the Sargeant Museum