Little Egypt Heritage Articles Stories of Southern Illinois (c) Bill Oliver 20 April 2003 Vol 2 Issue: #16 ISBN: pending Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen of Little Egypt, THE family history .... who should write it? The obvious answer is .... everybody. However, it is/was worse than pulling teeth to get any one of my family to set in writing the many wonderful oft told tales and stories. My children, grandchildren and cousins will have to rely on my versions of those stories I heard my elders tell. As a teacher, it was my experience to discover that many people, no matter their age, were/are fearful of writing. I can relate to that because I am always wondering how the words I write will be excepted by the reading audience. The general impression is that what they write HAS to be something significant. Now, as a youngest member of the older generation, [I detest the term "senior citizen"], I wake to the fact that as a thirty year old I had nothing but future ahead of me, plus what seemed hundreds of members of the older generation to ask about family stories. The awareness, suddenly upon me, that fewer of my generation are the only ones remaining to retell the "old, old" stories, and we are scattered around the country and world. The Alexandrian Library was the largest and most famous of the ancient world. It contained a collection of scrolls to envy. The Egyptian rulers, Ptolemy I and II, developed the library during the 200's B.C.. The idea expanded until over 700,000 scrolls were maintained there. Oh, what historians would give to have those pieces of antiquity available for research today. Maybe not quite as important, but a couple of books that have come to my possession give me a great thrill, for they furnish a small window to peer through to see how my folks and their neighbors lived a century and more ago. In my collection of items from the past are some ledger books. One of them was recycled as a scrapbook to paste in newspaper articles, obituaries, wedding and golden anniversary stories. If that wasn't resourceful, it was at least practical. But, then that is what our ancestors were ... they were the first recycleres. "Waste not, want not" was oft repeated advice that I heard in my youth. Grandmothers, never, but never threw anything away. Old clothes were cut into squares and diamonds to be used in quilt making. Grease was strained and reused. Come to think of it, motor oil was also strained and reused. It never wore out. Can't do that today with all the "detergents" added. Burned out light bulbs were used as a form to mend socks. Coke bottles, with a perforated stopper, were filled with water to sprinkle [dampen] clothes for ironing [pressing]. One hundred to two hundred, three hundred even, years ago our forbears were not "throw away" people. I don't know this for a fact, but New York City probably creates more garbage in one day than the early Dutch did in a year. In my collection of old ledger books of the merchants our forbears did business with are now coming apart. After a few years use as account books and a century of pasting newspaper articles in, they should be well used looking. However, I made some discoveries. I could take off those newspaper clippings and scan them into digital images to preserve and reuse them for heritage and genealogy. And, underneath were these wonderful account items. "Real" accounts. I don't know which is more wonderful ... the articles or the accounts. The accounts are wonderful first hand information about how "things were done". What is a community? It is a post office, a mill, a blacksmith shop, it is churches, it is a doctor, and it is a general-store. These elements make a community. Each of them, except maybe the doctor, served as the "corner drugstore" of my youth. These were the gathering places for the transaction of business, debate and gossip. These were the social hubs that made a community thrive. Each of the entities kept ledger books of business transacted. In these books are the wonderful legacies of daily happenings in the lives of our kin and their neighbors. I feel so fortunate to have them. In them are the items purchased and the payment .... 2 pigs, 1 day of rock hauling, gallon of kerosene, quarter-quarter beef, 2 bushel turnips, plowin' 5 acres, etc. These were payments to a doctor for his services. I liked the "12 lbs honey". There had to be a bee tamer there. The General Store was a big store ... well, not as big as Wally Mart, but big, anyway. In the very early days, during the period of great self-sufficiency [during the late 1700s through the 1800s] little was purchased. Some coffee, salt, some sugar. Otherwise, substitutes such as parched wheat, sorghum mollasses were used. Yet, the general store had a large array of available goods. These business were necessary, not to serve a city, but rather the tiniest of rural communities. They were the K-Marts with groceries of their day. We, today, say that we shop at [fill in the blank] ... folks then said, "I trade with [fill in the blank]." One of my ledger books is simply a daily log, listing every customer for that day, with an account number, and the purchases or payments for that customer that day. I've seen ledger books where every customer had their own page with the same information. It didn't matter how large or how small the transaction amounted to, it was duly recorded with an exact value, such as 18 3/4 cents. Payments on accounts were in varying amounts at varying times. Sometimes credit would be extended to a hundred dollars and only paid on once a year. Others paid in small amounts, often with goods such as produce, or even services of some kind. This is where a day's labor tilling, or plowing, or hauling rocks would come in. Whatever, the client and the merchant would agree on. In fact, a careful analysis reveals how little cash actually transferred from one hand to another. In one instance, a customer purchased lumber that had been used to make payment for another account. In the same way I'm guessing that the produce accepted as part payment on accounts was the same produce sold to other clients. In many cases the ledgers did not show the payments ever showing a zero balance. It seemed that folks always owed something to the general store. Commodities, such as butter was seen. What fascinated me was the amount of butter accepted in one day .... 20 pounds. Someone did a lot of churning. Nine cents a pound was credited to the account. Someone mined salt, for another account listed 15 ½ bushel salt .... $21.70 credit. $4.87 ½ was credited for nineteen and a half pounds of wool. Eighty one pounds of bacon for $6.48. Feathers ... six and 3/4 lbs against a dollar 68 and 3/4 cents. There were few accounts bearing the name of women. Those that were in the name of women listed mostly items of clothing, material, such as calico or muslin, and spices. These were usually paid for with feathers, eggs, and/or butter. Interesting was another type of payment. One client purchased chisels, a handsaw, augers, and a drawing knife. Later he stopped in for some nails. Later still he purchased hinges and some screws. He came back and paid part of the bill, and bought some molasses. Still later another person came in and paid off the account. The client might have been a traveling man who worked as a carpenter, moving on after completing a job. Other purchases leave much to be explained about the client. Buying a saddle, stirrups and boots, one man later paid almost all the bill with 134 pounds of bacon. He then charged 17 pounds of nails that he later came in paying cash for all but fifty cents of the balance due. That same day another came in and paid the fifty cents. The original account holder thus disappearing from the ledger books. This was an Easter Day and the family gathered for dinner. And, we had a good time talking and listening together. We hope your day was also great. Happy Easter. Wado, Bill -=- Other sites worth visiting: http://www.rense.com/general32/cxcol.htm http://www.earthsky.com/BBS/Observers-Notebook/19x18.html http://www.earthsky.com/BBS/Observers-Notebook/19x104.html http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/SOIL http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/ILMASSAC http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ne/state/BillsArticles/LittleEgypt/intro.html