Early in the nineteenth century, Worcester County, Massachusetts, became on the of the first regions in the state to experience rapid industrialization, and the small town of Spencer become a center for the manufacture of wire, boots, and shoes. The development of the shoe and boot industry began as a cottage industry in 1809 when the inauspicious Charles Watson produced a few dozen pairs for which he never received payment. In nearby Leicester, however, Josiah Green (1792-1876) and his brother Nathaniel found greater success when they began making shoes and boots in about 1811. Working from the garret of their mother’s house, 19 year-old Josiah began producing boots at $1.25 per pair. The scant profits he made from the sale of his boots in Boston encouraged him to continue, and the start of the War in 1812 added further impetus. In 1812, the brothers turned to Albany to market their goods, selling to military contractors at a profitable $2.25 per pair.

After dissolving his partnership with his brother at the end of the war, Josiah relocated to Spencer in 1816 or 1817, where he became the first of several large-scale manufacturers of shoes and boots. Early in his career, Green began to use pegging to attach heels and soles, producing a harder wearing product while driving down cost and increasing the rate of production. Widely known for the quality of his work, Green’s trade to the wholesale market grew rapidly, and by 1834, he erected a four story factory on the Boston Post Road, over which sat a sign reading “Josiah Green’s boot manufactory, established 1812.” Although Green was the largest of Spencer’s six major shoe- and boot-manufacturers in 1850, by the eve of the Civil War his firm had begun to lose market share to local competitors such Isaac Prouty, C. and G. Watson, and A.T. and E. Jones.

Green was married twice, first in 1816 to Tamer Watson (d.1820) and then to Sybil Underwood in 1821. In addition to two children by his first marriage, Josiah had eight children with Sybil. He continued in the boot trade until retiring in 1867, when his sons assumed control of the company. Green died on Dec. 28, 1876, and the company continued in operation into the twentieth century.

The records of Josiah Green and Co. document the growth and peak years of operation of one of the pioneers in high-volume manufacturers of boots in central Massachusetts. Although the account books and ledgers extend back into the 1820s, the bulk of the correspondence dates from 1889-1894, when Josiah’s sons operated the firm. Despite being sporadic and incomplete, the correspondence offers a glimpse into the manner in which Green’s business was conducted during a period when the firm sold to a wide network of wholesalers and jobbers in the northeast and Midwest. Most of the correspondence concerns placement or fulfillment of orders and issues over prices and payment. The four press copybooks in the collection contain outgoing letters for the years 1889-1892 and 1904-1905.

As a young man in Shutesbury, Massachusetts, William B. Stetson (b. ca.1836) earned a living by performing manual labor for local residents. Most of his work, and increasingly so, was found in the range of tasks associated with lumbering: chopping wood, sawing boards, making shingles and fence boards. By 1870, Stetson was listed in the federal census as a lumberman in the adjacent town of Leverett.

Stetsons rough-hewn book of accounts provides detail on the work and expenditures of a young man from Shutesbury, Massachusetts, in the years just prior to the Civil War. Carefully kept, but idiosyncratic, they document a working class mans efforts to earn a living by whatever means possible, largely in lumber-related tasks. His accounts list a number of familiar local names, including Albert Pratt, Sylvanus Pratt, Charles Pratt, Charles Nutting, E. Cushman, John Haskins, and J. Stockwell. Set into the front of the volume are a set of work records dated in Leverett in 1870, by which time Stetson had apparently focused his full energies on lumbering.

By the turn of the nineteenth century, the Hampshire County town of Worthington, Massachusetts, was a significant crossroads on the Boston-Albany Turnpike, belying its small size. The population in Worthington peaked at barely over 1,000 in 1810, and declined slowly thereafter, although it remained an active stopover on the road for many years.

This standard double column account book provides a concentrated record of financial and other transactions in the antebellum period, probably associated with a tavern in Worthington, Mass. Although the ledger’s keeper is unidentified, it records an assortment of odd jobs filing saws, smoking meat, lending horses, carting, pasturing cattle, and tending sheep, along with the sale of significant quantities of beer and cider and a regular stream of hard brandy and rum. There are records as well of providing meals and, in one instance, caring for prisoners and their keepers overnight (p. 21). Most of the clients who can be positively identified were residents of Worthington (e.g., Persis Knapp, Chauncy B. Rising, Nathan Searl, Shubal Parish, Elisha H. Brewster, Addison D. Perry, Merritt Hall, and Otis Boies), however others are noted as wayfarers, passing through from towns such as Whately or Hadley. Clients settled their accounts with a motley mixture of cash, goods, and labor.

During the late 1830s, James Shearer operated a general store near Palmer, Massachusetts, trading in the gamut of dry goods and commodities that made up the country trade in Massachusetts, from dried fish, butter, rum, and brandy, to soap, nails, chalk, cloth, sugar, molasses, spices, coffee, and tea. Although some customers paid their accounts in cash, most appear bartered goods (e.g, with butter) or services (carting).

The Shearer daybook contains detailed records the transactions of a general store located in or near Palmer, Mass., during the years surrounding the financial panic of 1837. The volume is attributed to Shearer based on a single signature on the last page of the volume, closing out a lengthy account with J. Sedgwick. Although Shearer cannot be identified with certainty, it appears likely that he was a member of the prolific Shearer family of Palmer in Hampden County. Customers in the volume who can be identified with greater certainty through the Vital Records and other sources were residents of Palmer (e.g, Lorenzo, Marcus M., and Porter Shearer, Harvey and Martin Sedgwick, Alonzo V. Blanchard), Wilbraham (Shadrach Taylor, Abraham Knowlton), Sturbridge (Emerson Lumbard), Brimfield (Bezaleel Sherman, Calvin Moulton), and Monson (Orrin Hovey).

Although poorly known, Chauncey S. Gillett (1815-1846) appears to have carried on a relatively small custom at a general store in Southwick, Massachusetts, during the early 1840s. The son of Almon and Cinthia Gillett, Gillett traded in the typical range of groceries, dry goods, and other commodities, including buttons, cloth, paper, tobacco and tea, molasses, and candles, but also in liquors of various sorts (rum, gin, and brandy cider). Gillett died at the age of 30 on January 4, 1846, and is buried in Southwick.

Kept by the young Chauncey Gillett, this daybook records a chronological series of transactions at a general stores in Southwick, Mass., between 1841 and 1845. Among Gillett’s customers were several relatives, including Almon, Rhodolphus, and Levi Gillett, all of whom are also buried in the Southwick cemetery.