Collection of Four Gloucester, New Jersey Manuscript Farm Receipt Books, 1850-55

[Gloucester, NJ], 1850-1855. Four volumes as follows:

1. [Title in Manuscript] Cash Expense Book 1850. Octavo (19cm.); yellow pictorial wrappers printed within decorative borders; [24]pp. of text. Brief evidence of biopredation to top fore-edge corner, light soil, else Very Good. Reeves used children's copybooks for his expense accounts, this depicting a Native American attempting to axe a white woman while his companion puts a stop to it.

2. [Title in Manuscript] Provisions 1852, 1853. Octavo (19cm.); blue pictorial wrappers printed within decorative border; [18]pp. of text. Some light soil, brief biopredation to spine crown. Upper cover decorated with the same illustration as above.

3. The Property of [Market Receipts 1854]. Octavo (19cm.); yellow pictorial wrappers printed within decorative border; [16]pp. of sporadic text. Light soil, else Very Good. Upper cover adorned with an illustration of a father and his brood and puppy being approached by a bent-over tax collector.

4. [Text in Manuscript] Market Receipts 1855. Oblong octavo (16x21cm.); yellow decorative wrappers; [18]pp. of sporadic text. Light soil, else Very Good. Upper cover adorned with decorative title "Teacher's Copy Book," published by Armstrong's Book and Stationery Store, Philadelphia; rear cover adorned with an attractive woodcut portrait of a cow. Near-complete collection of the account books for a five-year period belonging to the prosperous Gloucester, New Jersey, farmer John L. Reeves (1824-1897). Records note numerous trips to Philadelphia and occasionally Delaware and New York, as well as a penchant for mackerel and peaches, and wages paid for such services as shoeing horses, mending a plough, etc. Reeves was later elected a member of the State Senate from 1864 to 1866 and in the years preceding his death was president of the Farmers' and Mechanics' National Bank of Woodbury (see Mary E. Sinnott, "Annals of the Sinnott, Rogers, Coffin, Corlies, Reeves, Bodine and Allied Families" (1905).