Chace, Luther and Company business records

The collection consists of daybooks, journals, and ledgers relating to the production of sheetings, shirtings, jeans, and other cotton goods. The accounts show the small scale upon which the company was first established.

Of particular interest is Volume 7, the laborers’ ledger, which documents the economic and family interconnections of mill housing, the company store, and wages paid to women workers. The ledger includes a list of tenants on mill property, many of whom were women, charges for board at the mill boarding house, and payments for labor in the mill. Dorothy Vickers ran a boarding house in her tenement. Her rent was paid with credits from the mill for as many as thirteen boarders at a time, most of them women. Gardner Goddard's family took in boarders to offset his rent and charges at the company store, but he was also credited with day labor performed by Abigail, Sally, and Lucinda, presumably family members. Mill girls whose boarding house rent was deducted from their wages were left with little cash to show for their efforts. The ledger also contains cash wages of weavers such as Betsy Lamb, who wove sheeting and shirting and who evidently did not live in company housing. She took home $100 after a year's work.