Harrison Brothers Hardware Company daybook 4, 1904-1905.
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Dublin Core
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Description
This daybook contains the Harrison Brothers' daily store transactions from January 1, 1904, to December 31, 1905. The store was not open on Sundays or holidays. During these years the Harrison Brothers were no longer selling tobacco products. After renovating the number 3 Southside Square storefront and purchasing the number 2 storefront in 1902, the Harrison Brothers continued to sell china products such as dish assortments, glass products such as lamps, enameled steelware such as pots and pans, cutlery, and some hardware products such as stoves and pipes in 1904. At the end of 1904, the Harrison Brothers began to sell furniture such as rockers, chairs, beds, and window shades in the number 3 storefront and continued to sell Queensware in number 2. The store's furniture inventory expanded in 1905 to include mirrors, cradles, baby buggies, stove ranges, and cooking appliances such as waffle irons.
Each page in the Harrison Brothers daybooks is divided into columns for the date, transaction details, and debit and credit sales. The year is listed in the upper left-hand corner of each page and the month and day are listed in the column below on the left side of each transaction. Each transaction includes the name of the customer (for example: "W.L. Halsey", "Mrs. Lizzie Barclift", or "Goldsmith + Co."), the items that the customer bought, the total cost of the sale, the customer's method of payment (for example: "By Cash", "By Check", "By Mdse.", "By Work", "By Note" or by credit if no payment method is listed), and the customer account number. Some transactions include where the customer was from (for example: "Tuscumbia Ala") or, if the customer worked in a local cotton mill, the name of the mill is listed next to the customer name such as "Merrimac" or "M" for Merrimack Manufacturing Co., "Dallas" or "D" for Dallas Mills, and "Lowe Mill" or "LM" for Lowe Mill. The customer account numbers correlate to a page number in the Harrison Brother's Customer Account Ledgers where customer's store accounts are divided into debit and credit columns. This day book references accounts in Customer Account Ledger 1 located in The University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections and another ledger located in the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library Special Collections. Many accounts do not list customer account numbers if paid for in full with cash or note. These transactions are written over with two ##s. Debit and credit columns also appear in the daybooks on the right side of the page. Transactions are added up in the "D" column and payments are recorded in the "C" column. Employee information, invoices, inventory, assets, and liabilities for the Harrison Brothers store are included at the back of the daybook from pages 460-500.