The 450-page DayBook from Cadwallader Colden Jr's Store in Coldengham, New York is in the collection of the New-York Historical Society. Microfilm of the DayBook can be viewed on-site in their library. Follow the hyperlinks for more about Colden and Coldengham.

250th Anniversary The entries made in 1768 are 250 years old in 2018. Interesting insights into the items on the 250th anniversary of their purchase are chronicled in this Blog. If you want to know what Shalloon is, or how many pounds of snuff were inhaled, or who was a Cooper (barrel-maker), or who the store clerks were, or what Ozenbrigs were, this is the place to go.

The Transcribers This index would not be possible without the volunteer efforts of a few dedicated transcribers: Robin Assenza, Chris Campbell, Kent Campbell, Jay Campbell, Suzanne Isaksen, Merrill Loechner, Becky Olsen, AJ Schenkman, Melanie Tew, and Harold VanAken. They came from family, historical, and genealogical groups located from Washington to Connecticut.

The Transcription The transcription was enabled by digital images of the microfilmed pages. The images were viewed on home computers and the data were entered into a webform. About fifty of the pages were transcribed by two different people so a consistency check could be performed. All other pages were transcribed by only one person. Some validation of the input was done on entry. For example, only entries of 1767 and 1768 were allowed for the year. Additional validation was done after entry. For example, entries were flagged where pages and sequences on a page were out of order based on the entry timestamp. Transcriptions of surnames were all double-checked by the project leader. Despite the care in making the transcription, there are undoubtedly hundreds if not thousands of errors. There were at least four different clerks at the store with four different handwriting styles. Deciphering the numbers, letters, and abbreviations of four different hands of the 18th century is challenging!

Notations The transcription retains original spellings and capitalization. In some cases the carat (^) is added to denote that the subsequent letters are superscripts (ie. W^m for W^m) In all cases the "long s" (looks like f) was transcribed as "s". Transcribers' comments are in brackets ([]). The "Last Name Alternate Spelling" was also added to aid with searches. The dataset can be reordered by clicking on any of the column headers. Click again and the order reverses. The search box searches all columns except for "Total Purchase." So you can search for all visits on July 13, 1768 by typing in 1768-07-13.

Page Numbers The pages of the DayBook are not numbered. The digital images were numbered by this project with Image 001 being the image of the cover of the book and Image 002 being the first page with entries. Image 451 was the last page with entries. Images 049 and 050 were identical, so no "Page 050" appears in the transcription. No validation was done to confirm that every physical page of the DayBook has an image.

Page Headers Each page generally had a header with the date. Sometimes it also stated the place as "Coldengham." There were a few pages dated 1767 which clearly were in the year 1768 and were corrected in the transcription (otherwise numbering errors were preserved) Entries were separated by horizontal lines. Sometimes the line was interrupted with the day of the month.

Two typical entries are shown below.

Entry Date A solid line is interupted with the number "15" indicating the day of the month. This was not always given and date changes were not always clear. When not clear, the date of a transaction was transcribed as the date of the prior transaction. The second entry gives the date in parenthesis as the "17th" and a "Munday". The store was not open on Sundays.

Store Visitors The account holder's name appears next...George Ellems. If the entry shown above does not look like "Ellems" to you, then you get a feel for the difficulty of this transcription. One aid to determining the account name is the number on the left..."173" This number correlates to all transactions by George Ellems. The database can be searched for other entries with account "173" to see if the name is written more clearly. The DayBook is an example of what was often referred to as a "Waste Book." It contained details of the individual transactions. But another "Account Book" summed all of the debits and credits of the account holder in a running total. More on that later.

Debits and Credits The letter "D" to the right of the name is believed to indicate the transaction is a "Debit." If the store purchased an item from the account holder, the letters are "Cr" indicating that the transaction is a "Credit."

"Pick-ups" The first row may also contain the letters "D^d" This is believed to indicate to whom the item was "Delivered". Usually it is "him" (meaning the account holder) but it is also often a relative or neighbor. This entry can yield some invaluable genealogy information, confirming relationships, or pointing to the existence of a daughter not mentioned in any other record. In the case of the second entry above, Doctor Hill's items were delivered to "his Negrow."

Title, Suffix, Origin, Occupation The information on the account holder may also include titles (Doctor, Captain, Lieutenant, Widow), suffixes (Jr, Sr), relationships (Peter Haas brother-in-law), origins (Little Britain (LB), Wallkill, Swartkill), and occupations (mason, jober, fuller, blacksmith, millright, cooper). These were often hard to separate from the name itself. For example, "Cooper" was thought originally to be a surname, but historically this was not a surname in the area, and the given names of the "coopers" were all Dutch in origin. Therefore all instances of "cooper" were assumed to be referring to the trade of that person.

Alternate Surnames To aid the modern researcher, an alternate spelling of the surname is included. In most cases this is a modern day accepted spelling of the surname. In other cases where the modern spelling was not so obvious, a spelling from the 1895 Portrait & Biographical Record of Orange County, NY was used. When confusion still reigned, the spelling from a majority of instances in the original document was used. A great example of this is the related names of Rose, Rosa, Rossa, Roose, and Roosa. Are they all a variation of Rose? Rose, Rosa, and Roosa all appear individually in the 1895 Portrait & Biographical Record of Orange County, NY. Therefore the "Alternate Surnames" retain these distinctions even though the clerks often used them interchangably. In all cases the transcription of the "Last Name" is exactly as the clerks penned them.

Items Purchased The items purchased (or sold) are listed next. Usually there is one item per line with its quantity, unit of measure, name, rate, and subtotal. But occassionally there are multiple items in a line as is the case with George Ellems. The peculiarities of the abbreviations used in these entries is discussed elsewhere and is not part of this phase of the transcription, but here is the transcription: "to 1 # sug^r[sugar] 8^d 1 # Coffie 1/9". The clerk for Doctor Hill uses the more traditional style of one item per line: "2 Gallon W^s Rum @4/4 0 8 8". In the transcription, the symbol for pounds (£) is assumed and any separators (like the two dots between pounds"shillings"pence) are ignored.

Total The right column contains the total transaction. In the case of George Ellems, the sum of 8^d and 1/9 is 0 2 5 or zero pounds, 2 shillings, and 5 pence.

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