This is a fascinating 19th Centuryhandwritten book that served a double purpose: for education, and later, as abusiness account ledger.

One is that it was used as anagricultural business ledger to record types of work and monitory transactions.The dates of those entries are generally during the Civil War era, 1859-1864.Most entries reference East Bloomfield, New York, near Canandaigua, located inthe Finger Lakes region of New York State. These journal entries appear to bewritten by John Nudd (b. 1829 Hicking England). It describes trading off workamong Nudd, D Hallock, and AS Wolcott. Work covers a wide range of duties and happenings,including but not limited to: drawing lumber, binding wheat, getting cherrywhiskey, being in the vineyard, distilling, drawing manure, mowing grass,getting shelled corn, building a fence, and drawing sap. One entry says waitingfor Susan.

It looks like the journal was alsofirst used as a school notebook, covering areas of study such as measuring andmath, trigonometry, and navigation for sailing. There’s also a number ofexamples of calligraphy. The section on navigation has lovely calligraphyillustrations, including what appears to be an eagle and the north wind. Thesesections of the book appear to pre-date the book’s use as a business accountingledger. Also, written in calligraphy on the jacket (front cover) is the date1815 and the name J. Nudd. There’s also a stamp (lightly faded) showing a crownboth on the front and back of the jacket.

The book itself measures about 6 ½”x 8 “. And has a total of 87 pages of handwritten entries. It’s a hardcovervolume and the pages seem to be well crafted and all appear to have one of twodifferent watermarks. Some watermarks show a crown and others show an oval witha shield with a cross in the shield. The book appears to be bound in a light-coloredhide/leather. The jacket appears to be some sort of sturdy paper material. Onthe bottom edge of the book there’s a Roman Numeral “IV.”

Condition: Overall, the volume is stillcomplete intact, sturdy and very readable. The binding, particular the cover iswarped (bending up at the upper right corner). The pages are generally goodcondition, particularly for the age, but there’s still staining, wear folds,and slight tears. There are 5 pages in the back that appear to have been slicedout at some point in time as well as some other torn out pages. There’s also aburn mark. The book is covered in a brown paper jacket that dates perhaps asearlier as the book’s first use.