East Tennessee State University
Archives of Appalachia
Box 70295
Johnson City, TN 37614-0138
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Telephone: (423) 439-4338
1834-62
(1834-37)
1 volume
Accession No. 94
L. C. No.
PROVENANCE
The Jacob Cameron Store Ledger was loaned to the Archives of Appalachia at an unknown date by Mary Hardin McCown (now deceased), 512 E. Unaka Avenue,
Johnson City, Tennessee, who was a descendant of Jacob Cameron. The collection was opened for research in October 1988.
HISTORICAL NOTE
A native of Tennessee, Jacob Cameron (b. 1802) operated a store in Elizabethton, Tennessee, located in Carter County 100 miles northeast of Knoxville. Items stocked in the store included buttons, needles, thread, spools and ribbon; paper, pencils and slates; coffee, sugar, tea and wine; candles, beeswax and soap; spectacles, razor strops and combs; snuff boxes and cigars; indigo and madder; hats, gloves stockings, socks, shawls, boots and shoes; knives, forks, plates, cups and saucers; sweet oil, alum, soda powders and ointment; books such as "Walkers Dictionary," "juvenile readers" and spelling books; and axes, files, handsaws and nails. Cameron died in 1850 and was buried in Green Hill Cemetery, Elizabethton, Tennessee.
The store, the accounts for which are recorded in the ledger, originally was operated by Carrick W. Nelson, who in 1836 transferred the accounts owed him to Jacob Cameron and Joseph Powell. Any accounts collected were to be applied to the discharge of debts Nelson owed C. H. H. Brown and others in Baltimore, Maryland.
E.Speer
1988
M.Tedesco
Revised 1996
SCOPE AND CONTENT
The Jacob Cameron Store Ledger consist of two parts: (1) a double entry account ledger in which accounts of individual customers were recorded, and (2) a day book in which daily transactions were recorded. The information for each account in the account ledger includes the customer's name, the date and amount of each transaction, and the number of the page on which each transaction was entered in the day book. Debits were recorded on the left side and credits on the right side of each page.
The information recorded in the day book section of the ledger includes the date of each transaction, the number of the page on which each transaction was recorded in the account section of the ledger, the customer's name, a description of the item(s) purchased, and the amount of each transaction. Some pages in the day book are missing.
Entries in the day book section and the account ledger record transactions for 1834. There are a few unrelated entries for 1836-37 and 1862.
Important subjects covered in the collection include:
Cameron, Jacob, 1802-1850
Elizabethton (Tenn.)--Commerce
General stores--Tennessee--Elizabethton
VOLUME LIST
Volume 1 Cameron-Powell Store Ledger, 1834-1862.