W. J. Bryan Account Ledger

This collection consists of a 408-page ledger belonging to W. J. Bryan, a farmer in Greene County, Pennsylvania. The ledger lists transactions which seem to be related to sales and rental payments. Though the ledger details a few transactions for farm rentals or sales of farm commodities, many of the entries consist only of page numbers and money amounts which have been carried over from an earlier ledger (an entry of "6/2.25/22/.50" apparently representing "page 6, $2.25; page 22, $.50" and so forth). On opposing pages, Bryan notes account payments. Payment seems often to have been made in the form of labor, with Bryan noting what work was performed. The entries begin in 1860 and end in 1904, and run through the ledger's first 336 pages. The remaining pages are devoted to bank account records and to money received as royalty payments on coal and oil removed from property in Marion County, West Virginia and Greene County, Pennsylvania.

Also included is a folder containing papers which had been placed within the ledger. These papers consist largely of letters from the Fairmont Coal Company (Fairmont, West Virginia), concerning the payment of mineral royalties during the first decade of the twentieth century.