Rev. Friend’s Memo Book, Part 2

Rev. Friend’s Little Brown Memo Book, Part 2

Last time we peered into the first 7 pages of this 132 page memo book of Rev. William Friend, a record of subscriptions, deposits in banks and related accounting. The first part supplements the sparse Vestry records by showing us how they gathered subscriptions from not only Port Royal but a number of Episcopalians from Fredericksburg during the years 1837-40 to pay back lenders to the Church.  Since there are no dates associated with the entries the Vestry records provide a supporting basic outline of the events.

Significantly after Page 7 there are no entries until Page 40. “Bank of Commerce” then appears on both sides, one for debits (deposits into the account) and another credits (checks going out).  The use of the Bank of Commerce in Fredericksburg dates this section to 1851 or later since the bank was incorporated in that year.

By page 42 in pencil, we pick up the dates of 1850 and 1851. We are year or two after the disastrous St. Peter’s file. This section goes through page 54 and up to the year 1858. 

What is different in this section are the listing business transactions, both in Port Royal and Fredericksburg and accounting records.  St. Peter’s dealt largely with Port Royal and Fredericksburg though there is at least one entry of a Baltimore firm. 

There are some surprising entries.  They paid $1 in cash for a “map of gold region” in the 1850-51 timeframe (see in the graphic above). From 1830-1849 Virginia was the third largest gold producer. Spotsylvania had 20 working mines. 

Numerous entries appear as “bearers”.  These are interest payments on bearer bonds which were a means of financing entities generally from the Civil War until they were banned in 1982. They were not registered to owners but are owned by whoever had them in their possession. Thus St. Peter’s may have financed various needs by issuing bonds. 

We don’t how many of these transactions relate to the disastrous fire in 1849 or are “business as usual” transactions in the 1850’s.  The Vestry minutes do not list a treasurer or provide any treasury records. It is possible the fire and consequences called for a more formal accounting which became one of the duties of Rev Friend in this memo book. 

Out of 54 distinct entities in this section, 28 were identified with a couple of question marks. The handwriting was difficult to decipher since there are mixture of pen and pencil entries.  The total of funds going out 1850-1858 from all sources is just under $1700, approximately $32K in 2010 dollars.   Merchants were evenly divided between Fredericksburg and Port Royal. More specialized goods (food, hardware, books, drugs, various supplies) generally were procured in Fredericksburg. Farming and the building trades derived from Port Royal. 

We don’t know the purpose of any of these transactions. Food costs congregate to the top of the list. Building needs and insurance then appear down the list. 

Here are the images from pages 40-51 of Friend’s Memo book