Recently the executive director of Historic Fredericksburg Foundation, Inc. (HFFI) asked if the Heritage Center would be interested in seven business ledgers and one day journal belonging to the Timberlake family of Fredericksburg.  The firm was J.B. Timberlake and Company.  The items cover the years 1846 and 1959.  They were donated to HFFI in 2009.  The donor wanted them to stay in Fredericksburg and HFFI felt they could be better preserved and more available for research at the Heritage Center.  This is yet another example of how local historical organizations cooperate to preserve history.  HFFI was the Center's partner in publishing The Circle Unbroken: Civil War Letters of the Knox Family of Fredericksburg.

The journals are leather and canvas bound and of varying sizes.  They show who bought items described as sundries and merchandise.  Some purchasers paid in cash, others ran a tab and paid later.  When a bill was paid, it was recorded with the name of the customer, the amount and the date of payment.

The journals comprise a record of merchandise bought by members of the community for more than a hundred years.  One book spans July 1859 to March 1862 and contains names such as Dr. J.H. Wallace, Ellen Carmichael, George Shepherd, T.F. Knox, J.C. Moncure, J.M Whittemore, Miss Taliaferro, and Alsop. 

Many of the entries use a shorthand or abbreviation to describe the items and the cost.  One column seems to list the wholesale price and the next the price paid by the customer.  Some examples include:  1 pr pantaloons $1.05; 1 pr suspenders .$25 and $.37, rock[ing] chair, sew[ing] chair, bedstead, mag [mahogany] r[ocking] chair, sofa, plush rock[ing] chair, hair mattrass[sic], towel stand (Mrs. Little), wardrobe (Jas Ashby), 6 cakes soap $.18 and $.25, 1 mahogany Rockg Chair Mr. Richard T. Botts $7.50 and 10.00.  Most of the wood furniture was made of mahogany, cherry, pine, or walnut.

Sorting this out and making sense of it will require a great deal of study and the resources of other local repositories of historical information like the Virginiana Room, the National Park Service, the Historic Court Records, the University of Mary Washington and others as well as census records.  The information contained in these ledgers paints a comprehensive picture of household life over the period of the ledgers.  Perhaps some of your ancestors made purchases from the J.B. Timberlake Company.