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January 6, 2011

West Winfield Academy Cash Book 1865-1866

Five years ago my husband purchased two ledger books from Winfield, Herkimer County New York. One is a West Winfield Academy Cash Book and Store Ledger kept by John G. Robinson from 1865-1866.

It is a thin ledger, 12x8 inches in size and laid out inside in an odd format. There are several pages of entries for expenses for what appears to be a store and also for items used in the Academy.

The Academy was an early school established in 1850 in the town of West Winfield.

Then there are two pages from July 1865 with student or parents' names and monies spent or received, followed by pages for January and February 1866, then October 1865

Following the October 1865 entries are several pages of names and items they purchased at what might have been an auction.

Because of the time period (Civil War era) and the student (or parent) names I thought it might be of interest to readers of Olive Tree Genealogy blog. So I am going to transcribe the names and amounts of money noted with each.

Here is the start of the July 1865 names:

July 1. Amount invested by S S Paerd 4000.00
July 1. Amount invested by John B. Penn 500.00
July 2 Rec'd of Henry Fish in full of acct 500.00
July 6 Rec'd of David Colman 500.00
July 6 Rec'd of Robert Williams 87.50
I do not know if these are amounts paid by parents for a son's stay at the Academy or something else. If any readers are familiar with this Academy or the names mentioned, please do get in touch with me or leave a comment on this blog.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hello-

It may be a wise idea to loan these ledger books to the Family History Library so that they can digitize or microfilm them. It will then be listed in the Family History Library's online catalog and will be available to everybody who wants to view them. It also can serve as a backup copy in case the original gets damaged or destroyed. Although you must pay to send them the books, they will pay for the costs of duplicating and returning them to you. You can read more about this process here:

http://www.familysearch.org/eng/library/fhl/frameset_library.asp?PAGE=library_donations.asp