Account books for a blacksmith shop in Newark, Delaware

These three volumes are account books for the Newark, Delaware, blacksmith shop of Gilbert W. Chambers, kept between 1887 and 1921.

Each volume is a ledger with an alphabetical index of Chambers’s customers at the front. Chambers organized each customer’s debts and credit payments together, and often carried their accounts forward to later pages in the ledgers. Much of Chambers’s work involved shoeing horses and making repairs to carriages, sleighs, wagons, and other vehicles. Chambers also made and repaired tools, produced hardware, and mended various pieces of mechanical equipment. He frequently performed work for Delaware College, especially the school’s experimental farm, mechanical department, and chemical department.

Chambers kept Volume 1 between December 31, 1887, and January 1, 1899. The volume is bound with red marbled paper and red leather on the spine and cover corners. A typed note laid in to the first page of the index describes were Chambers’s blacksmith shop was located. This ledger contains 288 pages with handwritten entries in black ink.

Volume 2 is bound in cloth and red paper with black stamped designs. The word “LEDGER” is stamped in gold on the spine. There is a black stationer’s ticket in the shape of a book affixed to the inside of the front cover. The ticket reads “E.S.R. Butler & Son./STATIONERS/BOOKSELLERS/PRINTERS/ENGRAVERS/421 Market Street/WILMINGTON, DEL.” in yellow text. This volume contains 546 pages with handwritten entries in black ink. Pages 547 to 600 are blank. Chambers kept this volume from June 4, 1908, to January 1, 1915.

Chambers kept Volume 3 between January 1, 1914, and September 11, 1921. The volume is bound in cloth with black stamped designs, and has red paper on the cover corners, and red and black paper on the spine. The word “LEDGER” is stamped in gold on the spine. A stamp on the inside of the front cover advertises “Vernon’s No. 12 Special Flat Opening Blank Books.” The book contains 350 pages with handwritten entries in black ink. Pages 351 to 468 are blank.