Mary Beckley Bristow
Accounts, 1865-1870
[The following entries were made on the last two pages of the second note book. They give some idea of Mary's reduced circumstances and of the costs of everyday living in the years immediately after the Civil War.]
An account of money of mine that R L Bristow had in his hands since I came here to live, March 1865.
I sold my old dun mare Bets to Dr Dulaney for seventy dollars.1
Collected fifty dollars of J D Smith.2 We found seventeen dollars in my departed brother Julius's pocket book. After a settlement between us there was ninety dollars left in his hands for my benefit.
April 1865. Collected 60 sixty dollars for me of James Corban3 for Frankie's hire.4 Also sold my big red cow and calf for seventy dollars.
Oct 1866. Sold my young cow/ and calf/ for fifty dollars.
March 1868. Sold my young horse Forester to Ben Dulaney5 for one hundred dollars.
Nov 68. Sold my mule for twenty-five dollars to Robert Cleek.6
August 1869. Jerome sold my old cow for fifty dollars sixty-cents.
Reuben paid sixty dollars for the lumber, window sash, and doors for my house, twenty-five to Gaulway for chimney and eighteen to Hography for carpenters work.7
Statira paid ten dollars to Osborne of Florence for Dolly's colt.8
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An Account of money paid me by Reuben L Bristow.
April 1865. Reuben bought for me four yards of domestic, thirty-seven & half cents a yard, and ten yards and a half of striped for Nancy's clothes at thirty-five cents a yard, a net for my my hair seventy-five cents — five dollars ninety-two (& half) cents.
In May gave me six dollars.
In July twenty dollars. July Betty Bristow bought for me at Florence on her Father's account two yards and a half of paper cambric, thirty-five cents a yard. 1 spool of silk twenty cents. One dollar seven and a half cents.
Bought at Union, four yards and a half of shirting at thirty-seven and a half cents a yard, one pair of shoes for Nancy one dollar forty cents. Reuben paid for them.
Oct. He paid me one dollar to give a preacher.
November. He paid twenty-five dollars /seventy-seven cents/ for me to Conner & Co, Union.9 Also two dollars to send on for The Signs.
Dec. 1 dollar to buy coal oil. Six yards of linsey /Don't know that cost.
January 1866. One dollar to buy coal oil. Also bought for me at Covington nine yards of Calico 25 cents a yard, three dollars worth of sugar, half pound of tea — Six dollars forty-five cents.
Nov 1866. Gave me five dollars.
Dec. Gave me ten dollars.
April 1867. Received of Reuben five dollars. He bought me broom 40 cents.
Oct. Reuben gave me four dollars.
Nov. He gave me five dollars. Two weeks later he gave me five dollars more. The two fives I gave Julius for my writing stand.
Dec. Sold my stove10 to a negro man that Reuben owed. He /Reuben/ paid /me/ four dollars. One dollar I left in his hands to help pay our housekeeper at Sardis.
Received of Reuben 8 dollars June 1st 1868.
July 1868. I received five dollars from him.
At Anselm's August 68. 2 dollars.
1870 July. I received four dollars from Reuben.
In August five dollars more.
[There are no further entries.]
[ Obituary - Table of Contents ]
Notes:
Click on footnote number to return to text.]
1 Dr J. J. Dulaney (1832?- ?) lived in Florence, a town just west of the Kenton-Boone county line, a few miles from Reuben Bristow's place on Bank Lick Creek. He was among those aiding John Hunt Morgan in his escape to Confederate lines in October 1863, and he was later arrested as a Southern sympathizer..
2 Not identified. Possibly the John D. Smith who had married Mary Virginia Parrish, daughter of Edmund Hockaday Parrish and his second wife, Virginia Bristow, Mary's first cousin.
3 Corban was the husband of Mary's cousin, Nancy Pittman Clarkson.
4 Possibly another slave, not otherwise identified, whose services Mary had contracted out. The institution of slavery was collapsing. (See diary entries for 1865.)
5 Benjamin A. Dulaney, Jr (1842- ?) was working in 1870 as a dry goods clerk in Florence, but later followed his elder brother into the practice of medicine. J. J. and Ben were sons of Benjamin and Louisa V. (Gaines) Dulaney of Madison County, Kentucky. (See Perrin, History of Kentucky, Edition 7, 788.)
6 Robert Finnell Cleek (1825-1894), the elder brother of the late Ben and Esau. He had married Attilla Rice in 1850. By 1870 they were living near Walton.
7 Neither craftsman has been identified.
8 According to the census, Joseph Osborne was a teamster. The ten dollars may have been a stud fee or for blacksmith services, assuming that Dolly was Mary's mare.
9 Probably Robert K. Conner (1825-1889), who operated a drygoods store. The 1883 Atlas shows his store at the southeast corner of the main crossorads in Union.
10 This may have been the stove Mary's father had given her. (See above, 27 Mar 1855.)
