Finding Aid, Pickensville Alabama Store Ledger, 1841

This is a store ledger donated by a descendant of the store proprietor. Therefore, this collection is referred to as the Pickensville, Alabama Store Ledger, 1841. This name is consistent throughout the finding aid and the box labels. The extent of this collection is 1.66 (one point six-six) linear feet. The Pickensville Alabama Store Ledger was donated to the United States Army Corps of Engineers by Jimmy Wilbourne and consists of the store’s day by day sales from July 1, 1841 through October 29, 1841, except for the dates noted in Table 5.
The ledger arrived in a pre-made box designed for oversized photographic materials, with the pages wrapped in Ethafoam® padding and an additional layer of Ethafoam® to cushion it. The pages of the ledger were in very poor condition upon receipt. The fragility of the document precluded any attempts at repair via archival mending tape. As such, it was decided to immediately encapsulate each page within archivally stable Mylar®, sealing it with archivally stable double-sided tape. Per the Table of Contents (see below), current pages 1-88 of the ledger were encapsulated in bulk Mylar® from a roll sealed on four sides with archival tape leaving a one-eighth to one-quarter inch air gap in one corner. Pages 89-252 were encapsulated in L-sleeve Mylar® sleeves with two factory sealed edges and two sides sealed at the VCP with archival tape, leaving the same sized air gap. For uniformity, it was decided to insert the odd numbered pages of the ledger into the L-sleeve Mylar® with the factory-sealed edge on the left-hand side. A few of the pages were still delicately connected via the original binding of the ledger. These pages were carefully separated so that they could be properly encapsulated.