Frederick Lyman Brown records

The collection contains the private accounts of Frederick Lyman Brown, which include household accounts listing payments for food, domestic service, and his daughter's tuition at Radcliffe for 1899, as well as the receipts of Frederick L. Brown and his wife, Elizabeth H. Brown, from 1869 to 1919. Receipts belonging to Elizabeth H. Brown relate to her property and houses in Somerville and Boston, Massachusetts, and record payments for taxes, repairs, and improvements. The records illustrate the changes in food prices as well as the prices of household goods and services over the fifty-year period from the end of the Civil War to the close of World War I. In the first volume both quantities and price are carefully stated, but this practice is not a standard for the later volumes. Although the items purchased are recorded, the vendor is rarely listed. Exceptions include H. I. Nason as well Swallow and Fales Company. In addition to foodstuffs, the account books contain expenses for fuel (coal, kerosene and cord wood), doctor and nursing bills, domestic service, household articles, repairs, snow removal, gardening, water taxes, and pew taxes.

Most of the entries are accounts; however, there are often inserts of a more personal nature. These include the birth of a son; jury duty for a murder trial in 1895; tuition payments for a son at Harvard and a daughter at Radcliffe; trouble in collecting rents and mention of vacation trips. Also President McKinley’s death was carefully noted.