Sarah R. Latimer account-keeping exercise book

Sarah R. Latimer, a resident of Wilmington, Delaware, completed this account-keeping exercise circa 1808-1809. The exercise includes a sample daybook and ledgers.

Latimer likely copied the daybook and ledgers from an instructional manual, possibly a later edition of Charles Hutton’s A Complete Treatise on Practical Arithmetic and Book-Keeping, Both by Single and Double Entry, which was first published in the 1760s. Latimer’s daybook transcription closely follows an 1807 edition of this manual, although the names of fictional debtors vary slightly. While “George Robson, of York” and “James Wilson, Schoolmaster” are still present, Latimer’s transcription updated “Lady Strawberry” to “Lucy Berry,” and changed “Sir Jeffery Slingstone” to “Jesse Sling.” The daybook records the debts of these individuals in chronological order, beginning with James Elford of Bath’s purchase of broadcloth on January 1, 1806. Although many of the debtors are described as living in English towns, Latimer recorded her own location as Wilmington at the top of each page in the daybook. Many of the fictional individuals in this exercise settled their accounts with Latimer in December 1806.

Following the daybook is a section labeled “Ledger A” in which each individual’s transactions for the year are grouped together with debts on the left-hand page and payments on the right-hand page. For instance, Latimer noted that George Robson’s debts for sundries purchased in January and March of 1806 were settled by a payment of cash in full on October 27, 1806. Latimer moved the accounts of individuals whose accounts were not settled into a second ledger at the back of this volume, entitled “Ledger B.” Although the entries in this exercise were dated 1806, Latimer signed and dated Ledgers A and B on April 7, 1809, and April 13, 1809, respectively.

At the back of the volume is a short handwritten description of the “principals books of accounts,” which included the daybook, ledger, memorandum book, and expense book. It is likely that Latimer copied this description from an instructional manual as well.

This volume is provides outstanding evidence of how educated young women learned to keep accounts in early nineteenth-century Delaware.

The volume is bound with marbled paper wrappers and contains forty-one leaves of unlined, wove paper, most with handwritten text in ink.