Charles W. Eliot personal expense records

The records in this collection including bills, receipts, canceled checks, and correspondence document the personal expenses of Charles W. Eliot from 1857 to 1923. The expenses include payments for household goods, the maintenance and repair of property, building construction, entertainment, commercial investments, education, and medical necessities. Also included are United States Internal Revenue income tax bills Eliot paid during the Civil War. The records reveal Eliot’s purchasing patterns and document his wealth and social position in the Boston community. The bills and receipts from 1857 to 1872 represent many nineteenth-century occupations including plumbers, painters, engravers, photographers, printers, jewelers, and tailors from Boston and Cambridge; and include a record of items purchased, prices, and services rendered. The bills and receipts document what Eliot and his family ate, wore, and how they lived. The canceled checks in the collection from 1869 to 1923 offer an example of formal printed checks and banking practices in the nineteenth century. The collection also includes correspondence from 1880 to 1882 regarding Eliot’s purchase of land on Mount Desert Island in Maine for the construction of a summer home. A limited amount of Harvard College related bills and receipts chronicle the purchase of blankets, wood, and the repair of carpeting.