Feb 04, 2016 - Sale 2404

Sale 2404 - Lot 125

Price Realized: $ 358
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
(CONNECTICUT.) Ledger and record book of the Curtis-Stratton family of Stratford. [38] complete manuscript leaves, plus many other leaves partially excised or torn out. Folio, original vellum, worn; some leaves detached. sold as is. [Stratford, CT], 1747-1823
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Additional Details

This volume was used to record the vital records and business dealings of five generations of the Curtis-Stratton family. It was begun in 1747 by merchant Daniel Curtis (1695-1763), mainly as a ledger for what seems to have been a general store. These early accounts from the 1740s and 1750s fill most of the volume. In the rear of the volume he recorded the earlier deaths of his parents in 1698 and 1719, as well as the births of his children. After his death, the book passed to his daughter Aner or Anna (1741-1811), and was used to record a few transactions by her husband Thomas Stratton (1723-1787) in the 1770s and 1780s. It then passed to their son John (1772-1850), who continued the family register, and in turn his son John William (born 1806), who apparently tore out numerous pages, inscribed his name repeatedly, scrawled "George Washington commander in chief," copied over some poems, doodled a few drawings, and generally had a field day.
What remains is still a useful document of colonial Connecticut life. A note dated 1762 suggests a novel means of funding the Connecticut government: "To pay our taxes suppose our Legislature for the first two or three years order forty vessels to be built and loaded . . . in the most convenient ports for timber, iron work, and provisions." Most evocative is an undated note that was apparently added during the Revolution: "To the offisers of this state . . . if our cause in this war is good, than the athority in the states is the ordinance of God, which he that resists shall reserve to themselfs damnation."