Historic Accounting Books Have A Tale To Tell

By Nancy K. Crevier

For many years before the brick building on the corner of Church Hill and Glen Roads in Sandy Hook Center was known as Chao Chao Restaurant or The Red Brick Tavern, locals knew that local landmark as the site of H.G. Warner’s general store.

A clapboard building when William B. Glover opened a grocery store there in 1833, in 1857 that original building was moved across Church Hill Road, said town historian Dan Cruson, and the brick store was constructed. In 1918, Hobart G. Warner and his partners George Taylor and Hobart Curtis took over the business, and the Warner family operated the business until it closed in 1978. When Hawley Warner took over the business in 1944, the store became known as H.G. Warner and Company. Hawley Warner was the sole proprietor for the last 30 years that the store was in business.

A discovery by staff members of the Danbury Museum and Historical Society in January is now beginning to shed light on the likes and lives of Sandy Hook citizens who frequented the store during the 19th and early 20th Century, though. One hundred twenty-five account books kept by H.G. Warner were found in a storage area of the Danbury Main Street museum. “Staff members recognized them as not being from Danbury, and contacted me,” said Mr Cruson. “They gave them back to Newtown as a resource,” he said.

The crumbling, leather-bound books include several daybooks that recorded daily transactions as they occurred, and ledgers that list by name the debts and credits of early area residents.

There are several things to be learned by reviewing the account books, Mr Cruson said. “The first thing we learn is about business practices and the evolution of business practice across the 19th and into the 20th Centuries. The second lesson is about events and specific things that make the history of the store more clear to us,” he said. Examining the ledgers also sheds light on consumption patterns of individuals and organizations of that era.

“Father Fox of St Rose, and the Sisters of Mercy had accounts at H.G. Warner’s,” said Mr Cruson. “This is still a real work in progress for me, but it will be interesting to see what kinds of needs the sisters had, or that the priest had, as well as other townspeople.”

In the hours he has devoted so far to the accounting books, Mr Cruson has inventoried and indexed points to which he plans to return for further scrutiny.

What has turned up so far, he said, is a clear picture of prices and price stability over the years. “These document, for example, what happened during the crash of the 1930s and what impact that had on consumption patterns. It also looks at patterns during the years 1837 and 1857, when there were two other really big depressions in our country,” Mr Cruson said.

In some of the earliest accounting books, Mr Cruson has already realized that some accounts were settled through barter. Farmers brought in produce, flour, or butter to reconcile their accounts.

“After the Civil War years, there is a change to more of a cash economy at the store,” he has noted.

One thing Mr Cruson was not aware of until poring over the old ledgers was that H.G. Warner’s was a flour broker for local mills and farmers. “The other big surprise to me,” said Mr Cruson, “is that they were a foreign exchange broker, changing foreign dollars into US currency.” He suspects that the large Irish population of the time also used Mr Warner’s service to change US dollars into Irish pounds sterling to send back to the old country.

Examining the old books is time-consuming work. Written out by hand with a nib pen dipped into ink and then blotted — not always so successfully — or in faded pencil, the script is difficult to decipher. Several clerks were responsible over the years for adding to the books, particularly the daybooks, and each individual’s handwriting has its own characteristics.

“It is interesting to note that when H.G. Warner takes over there are no longer separate day books and ledgers, just one big account book that recorded the sales chronologically,” Mr Cruson said. It could be, he guessed, that Mr Warner had a previous background in business and used that knowledge to modernize the accounting methods at the general store.

The daybooks offer a glimpse at what early residents needed. The necessities such as flour, butter, eggs, and sugar show up frequently in the ledgers, as well as bushels of potatoes and apples. Raisins, currants, and yeast suggest that it was an era of home baking. Molasses and oil were sold by the gallon. Consumers purchased fresh codfish, pork, and beef.

Dry goods such as gingham material, skirts, scarves, and thread were needed by citizens of Sandy Hook. Carpet tacks, plugs, and netting were supplied by the business to Sandy Hook’s natives. In the later years, canned and bottled goods were carried at H.G. Warner’s and these begin to round out the orders of the individuals who patronized the business.

“It’s startling when I come upon a name that I know from previous research,” said Mr Cruson. “It’s like looking over the shoulder of an old friend. There’s a mystical aspect that here’s something a guy was writing down over 100 years ago, too,” he said.

The books have far more to divulge to him, said Mr Cruson, acknowledging the amount of research left to do. “In addition to the ledgers from H.G. Warner’s there are some ‘mystery’ books, also apparently from Newtown, that were in this cache,” he said. One of them may be a business accounting book from Baldwin & Beers, one of Newtown’s earliest merchant partnerships. “If it is,” said Mr Cruson, “it will be the earliest accounting book we have of the earliest mercantile business in town.”

The 300 pounds of fragile paper encased in volumes of deteriorating leather bindings are safely stored in the C.H. Booth Library vault for now, said Mr Cruson. While they are not presently available to the public, he said that they would at some time become open to other curious historians in town.

“It’s a pretty amazing discovery, but there is still a long way to go in examining them,” said Mr Cruson. “It’s going to be fun to see what we find out.”