Information Sheet

 

 

R         Ledgerwood, Samuel, 1824‑1896.

401                  Memoranda book, ca. 1851‑1853.

                                    One folder, photocopies and typescript.

 

 

 

This is a memoranda book of an early resident of Relfe in southern Phelps County, Mis­souri.  The entries concern the operations of a general store and mill.

 

Samuel Ledgerwood was a native of Indiana.  He came to Missouri circa 1845, settling on Spring Creek in what was then Pulaski County, later part of Phelps County.  Ledgerwood’s note­book indicates that he was operating a mill and general merchandise business by 1851.  Ledger­wood served several terms as assessor of Phelps County after the Civil War.  In 1878, he moved to Montpelier township in Shannon County.  He was elected presiding judge (commissioner) of the Shannon County court in the 1880s.  He died in Shannon County in 1896.

 

Ledgerwood’s memoranda book contains entries primarily concerned with his business in­ter­ests, circa October 1851 ‑‑ November 1853.  His ventures seem to have included a general store and possibly a blacksmith shop, common adjuncts to milling operations in this period.  Much of the business at the mill was paid for in trade, with deer skins, feathers, and labor ac­cepted at vari­ous times for mill work and sundry items of general merchandise.  The exact lo­ca­tion of Ledger­wood’s mill is not known, but his customers included the Bradford, Coppedge, Lanning, Lawson, and Ragan families of Relfe, a few miles to the southwest of the confluence of south Spring Creek with the Big Piney River.

 

 

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