Ledger

This simple accounting book reveals telling glimpses into the people and processes at work in an industrializing, pre-Civil War Washington, DC. Business owner Peirce Shoemaker started the ledger in 1850 after inheriting the family's estate of agricultural and industrial businesses in the northwestern section of the city from his uncle, Abner Peirce. These holdings included the grain-processing operations at Peirce Mill, now a National Park Service site, as well as more than 900 acres of agricultural lands. Generally, the ledger contains accounts receivable and inventory information related to running these businesses, including barters of wood, pigs, hay, and buckwheat made in exchange for grain milling. But the ledger also contained lists, including several of the names, ages, and genders of enslaved persons. The first page of the ledger book also has a glued-on printed newspaper clipping advertising the sale of "five healthy, good slaves,"� directly opposite to the inside front cover bearing Shoemaker's signature. The 1850 census documented 18 slaves on the estate. By 1862, five years after Shoemaker closed the ledger, this number had grown to 20. This was the second highest number of enslaved people held by one family in Washington, DC.