Stanley Griswold daybook, 1790-1801 Digital

Daybook of general merchandise sales, money borrowed, notes exchanged, and other financial transactions of Stanley Griswold, in New Milford, Connecticut, dated 1790-1801. Entries mostly reflect trade with merchants, laborers, and shopkeepers, of shoes, stockings, medicines, farm and dairy produce, wheat, lumber, and West Indies and British commodities like molasses, rum, sugar, gunpowder, and dry goods. Griswold hired out his horses and paid taxes on behalf of certain residents. There are additionally multiple accounts for wood and chopping wood; Griswold stipulated he receive forty cords of wood a year as a condition of employment as minister of the First Congregational Church.

Names in the volume include merchants Meade & Lockwood, Ithamar Canfield, Riverius Camp & Reuben Warner, William Taylor, Peter Fairchild, shoemaker Stephen Chittenden, tavernkeeper Amasa Ferriss, saddler Noadiah Mygatt, tailor Samuel Garlick, blacksmith Asa Prime, physicians Chauncey Lowry and Lemuel Thomas, and attorney Sherman Boardman. There are also entries for D. & E. Boardman, the shop and business of Elijah Boardman (1760-1823) and his brother Daniel; Elijah Boardman, along with Griswold, was a proprietor of the Connecticut Land Company. Additional names are Polly Blanchard, Colonel Josiah Starr, Sarah Gaylord and other members of the Gaylord family, Samuel Prince, Jeremiah Canfield, Major Elisha Bostwick, Captain Noble Hine, Prudence Collins, Clark Blackney, and Anna Elgar. Among the credits for labor or family services are Isaac Turrill for weaving; Chloe Jordan for washing; and Peggy Sullivan for nursing.

There are payments from Griswold for schooling his sons to Gideon Treat and Reverend Nathaniel Taylor, and to Chauncey Lowry for extracting a tooth in January 1791. In June 1791, he charged Sherman Boardman, Jr., for twenty-two weeks of board and lodging, and instruction in the languages, and in the works of Virgil and Cicero. In August 1792 Noadiah Mygatt received credit for upper leather he gave Griswold to make a pair of shoes for Phebe. In January 1793 Griswold paid a man named Walker to go to Hartford and call for Dr. Samuel Flagg to attend to his child's illness. A December 1796 entry of John Stilson, Jr., shows he was credited by two loads wood to a man named Titus; Griswold in turn paid cash to Titus at the delivery of the last load of wood. In March 1797, Joel, an African American man, was paid cash for one day's work cutting wood.

There is section in the volume of recipes for "Spring beer", "Courant wine", "Clove water," and "Spruce bottle beer", followed by an account of approximately 100 books Griswold borrowed from Union Library with a note added, "Those with a cross I have read." About 57 books were marked as read from 1796 to 1802, including Evelina by Frances Burney (1752-1840), Woman as she should be by Eliza Parsons (d. 1811), Caroline de Lichtfield by Isabelle de Montolieu (1751-1832), and a volume on physiognomy by Johann Caspar Lavater (1741-1801).

Daybook entries resume on October 27, 1797, for Philo Lines, David Noble, Samuel B. Buck, David Baldwin of Long Mountain, Asher Canfield, and others. In November 1798 Clark Blackney was credited by discount of what was due him from Aqueduct Company charged in Griswold's favor. An entry in December 1798 reflects a cash payment to an African American man named Jethro. Several accounts relate to Griswold's interest in the Connecticut Land Company. In April 1800, Elijah Board was credited by cash paid at Hartford for deeds of "New Connecticut"; in November 1800, Griswold transferred to him a faction of a lot of land of Palmyra in Connecticut Western Reserve. The volume is tête-bêche and the last section contains receipts from the Collectors of the First Society in New Milford for taxes collected by the Society treasurer. There are also accounts, dated 1792-1800, of Huldah Jacklin, Thaddeus Jacklin, and Betty Freeman, mostly for horse hire, salt, and wheat. Additionally there is a list of men and figures under the label "Wood," possibly reflecting deliveries of wood to Griswold as stipulated in his employment agreement. There are references to labor by one of the Jacklins, and to Joel cutting wood, as well as an account of "Button," showing debits for cash and butter and credits to an unnamed person for soldering a cup, putting tin on the head of an aqueduct, and mending an oven; and an account against the Aqueduct Company from Griswold for hire of diggers and the board of Howard & Sprague.