Information Sheet

 

 

R         Paydown (Mo.).

303                  Records, 1862‑1897.

                                    Two volumes and one folder.

 

MICROFILM

 

 

 

These are ledgers, 1862‑1869, from a bakery in St. Louis, and from Paydown Mill on the Gasconade River in Maries County, Missouri.  There are also a few papers, 1881‑1897, of the pro­prietors of the mill and store at Paydown.

 

Paydown is located on the east bank of the Gasconade River at the mouth of Spring Creek, ten miles northeast of Vienna.  Modern usage renders the name as a single word, but “Pay Down” seems to have been the preferred spelling during the nineteenth century.  The area was settled by Charles Lane in 1826, and was the site of a grist mill, general store, post office and other enter­prises until the 1930s.  The mill and two adjacent build­ings remain standing (1988) and can be seen from Highway 42.

 

The Paydown ledgers from the Old Jail Museum at Vienna came from the descendants of George W. Franklin.  The volumes are attributed to Franklin's tenure at a general store at Pay­down.  However, although Franklin's name appears in the accounts, he does not appear to have been the proprietor during the period represented by the ledgers.

 

Volume 1 includes a mixture of miscellaneous accounts and memoranda concerning the bak­ing business of W. C. Wilson and J. H. Atwell in St. Louis, and general mercantile accounts from the general store at Paydown.  The connection between the types of records might be through A. D. Wilson & Co., whose name appears at the end of Volume 1 and on the cover of Volume 2.  No re­lationship between the Wilsons is known, but is assumed to exist.

 

The St. Louis entries for Wilson and Atwell begin in 1862.  There are several pages de­tail­ing the profits and expenditures for baking pilot bread or hard tack, on contract, probably for the U.S. Government.  Other entries record the sales of barrels of sugar cookies and “ginger nuts” to the sutlers of Iowa and Michigan troops, and to numerous restaurants and eating houses in St. Louis.

 

The move to Paydown from St. Louis appears to have been made sometime in early 1866. Sales at the general store there were entered in Volume 1 from 31 January 1866 to 28 August 1868.  Volume 2 begins with a list of unpaid accounts, December 1865 -- August 1866.  The list is followed by open accounts at the Paydown store, ca. June 1866 -- October 1869.

 

A few Franklin family papers follow the volumes.  Of interest are the list of repair parts avail­able for the Buckeye mowing machine in 1887, and a letter to George Franklin by Thomas M. Watkins, 1882, asking for support for Watkins’s campaign for assessor of Maries County.

 

 

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