Robert Townsend Account Books
Robert Townsend Account Books Transcription Project
For the past four years, the East Hampton Library Long Island Collection has given serious, dedicated attention to one of its important collections, the Townsend Family Papers. Comprised of numerous manuscript letters, deeds, and the voluminous business records of this prosperous Oyster Bay, N.Y. merchant family, it’s the latter material, specifically the business records of son Robert Townsend, that are best known to researchers of the famed Culper Spy Ring, George Washington’s professional, secret intelligence gathering operation in New York during the British Occupation in the American Revolutionary War. Through diligent digitizing, cataloging, transcribing and useful tools, we have made this fascinating and important information accessible and, it is our hope, more readily understandable and usable to everyone. The reader will not only find innumerable names, products, prices and other glimpses into 18th century life just before, during, and immediately after the Revolution, but the painstaking research and explanatory guidance of arcane accounting & bookkeeping methodology, colonial currencies conversions, and much more.
About the Project
Introduction to the Robert Townsend Account Books
Robert Townsend Account Books
Waste Book – May 12, 1772 – June 25, 1772
Book 1 – April 1, 1773 – November 15, 1779
Book 2 – November 23, 1779 – March 29,1781
Book 3 – May 3, 1781 – May 9, 1782
Book 4 – May 21, 1783 – August 8, 1783
Book 5 – May 18, 1781 – August 1, 1783
Book 6 – Circa 1781 – June 1, 1785