04/24/04

An old ledger has been passed down through my family for several generations.  I don't know the source of it, but it appears to be from the store in Greeneville owned by David Deaderick.  The accounts cover a period from 1815 to 1820, and may have been inscribed by Mr. Deaderick's apprentice, Valentine Sevier. Many of the accounts mention the names of Greene County's early settlers.

We recently donated the ledger to the T. E. Cox Historical and Genealogical Library in Greeneville, in hopes that they can provide a suitable environment for its preservation and research.  In the meantime, however, it certainly has value to genealogists.  We are therefore posting an index to the names in the ledger, and have transcribed some of its contents. After transcribing over a period of two years, and finding that only about 10% had been completed, we finally decided to photograph the Ledger before turning it over to the library.

This web site contains both the transcribed pages and the photographs of all the pages in the ledger. Some of the writing in the ledger is tiny; so we have used the highest resolution possible, consistent with reasonable download times.  You should be able to read every word.

Genealogists:  Please don't expect a wealth of information.  Most of the entries are "Mdse per Day Book" and "Paid in full per Day Book." However, there are a few tidbits that make it worthwhile.  For example, a comment above the account of William Brown identifies him as "Jotham's Brother."  This may be of interest to Brown researchers.

Here is a sample transcription

There are also secondary names associated with many of the accounts.  For example, an account may have received credit for "Work for V. Sevier" or may have received credit for payments from a third party.  Thus two indices are supplied:

Index by Name on Account 

Index by Secondary Name 

jimslone@knology.net

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