How To Read A Ledger; Or How the Bookseller Conquered Numbers

As things have a way of doing, the Chinese autograph book reminded me of another cool thing I want to show you. This one's an old ledger from Sandusky, Ohio dating from the late 1880's. I wish I could take credit for it, but it's Eric who bought it and he who taught me how to read it. Being a bit number phobic despite the efforts of my dear friend Sunday Morning Joe, who is still here after all these years, I tend to run screaming into the night at the sight of column upon column of numerals, marching along page after endless page.

"Why is this so interesting? Tell me!" I pleaded, as Eric hunched over the small leather book the second we got home from the flea market. He looked like Sherlock Holmes poring over clues.

Turns out, he WAS like Sherlock Holmes poring over clues. Who'd have thought it -- the dreaded numbers can actually tell a story! The trick is to watch the dates, look for repetitive purchases, and pick out the unusual ones. Think about holidays and see how, or if, they alter spending patterns. Ask yourself, "What do these purchases tell me about the lifestyle of the ledger keeper? What do they tell me about his values, his economic situation, and his pleasures?" Bearing all this in mind, I took my turn with the small leather book and met young William Stein and his family.

As it happened, Mr. Stein bought the book on Oct. 8, 1883 and paid the Hamilton & Schumacher Company fifty cents for it, but never used it until 1885. Right away it's evident by the amount of butter, sausage, lard, eggs, biscuits and beer purchased that his wife Anna served hearty meals. They ate by the season though so summer brought "straw berries", " water melon", tomatoes, grapes and once ten "pine apples" for a dollar, which seems a bit exotic given the area, though they may not have been the Hawaiian kind. At the story's start William and Anna had one child, Lillie, for whom they bought a bedstead for $4.75, several dolls, a Humpty Dumpty, a pair of shoes and a book.

They didn't own their own home, but they did have a house on Tiffin Avenue and paid $4 a month in rent, $18.00 for 30 tons of coal to heat it, and $1.25 for ice to keep the food from spoiling. They also had no private land transportation, so they took the streetcar and sometimes rented a buggy when needed. Being close to Lake Erie though they did have a boat and William paid $1.00 to keep it on someone's lot over the winter. Life was good with tickets to Cedar Point, an amusement park which still packs in the crowds in Sandusky to this day, to music halls to hear German bands, and once to see a Spanish troubadour. There were firecrackers, flags, and torpedoes for the Fourth of July, and a turkey for Thanskgiving with wine and even French brandy. Christmas brought a live tree for 65 cents, lots of candles, and walnuts and spices (citron, allspice, cardamom, and cinnamon) for baking.

Along about that first Christmas though several visits to the doctor and repeated unexplained expenditures for medicine popped up and continued into the New Year of 1886, only trickling down to nothing after July when a new baby, a boy named Eddie, arrived. For the delivery William paid the midwife, Mrs. Schneider, $6.00 and also forked over seventy cents for a laundress while his wife recovered. After that there was lots of "soothing syrup" purchased, but the question of who needed to be soothed is up for grabs. Was it a colicky baby? An exhausted Anna? A jealous little sister no longer the star of the show, or Papa William kept awake by noisy nocturnal feedings? Whatever the case, by the time the holidays rolled around "soothing syrup" was off the list and William seemed content as he logged in $7.83 for "Christmas presents for my wife and children."

The Stein family rang in the New Year of 1887 with beer, candy, sausage and yams, blissfully unaware of the changes awaiting them. But in March hand-drawn crosses bracket the notation that Grandmother died on the 17th at the age of 81. William
and his family paid $2.00 towards the flowers on the 18th and then buried her on the
20th at a cost of $2.75. The next month he noted that Mr. C. W. Byington had moved into the family's rented home and would be paying a dollar a month for his room. Maybe the new baby had strained the budget, or perhaps he was only helping out a friend. But either way, William still played his harmonica, enjoyed his beer, and bought the occasional book.

The story abruptly ends in 1888 (no more pages) with the arrival of a third child, a boy, born at 4:55 a.m. October 25th. The brown calf boards close, protecting a fragment of an ordinary German-American midwestern family's life in the late 19th century.

It's alway been magical to me the way stories lurk everywhere we go and in everything we touch. But it took my husband's eye and William Stein's careful records to show me that sometimes they can hide even in the scariest places!