Have you heard the news? History Revealed co-founder, Molly Kerr, received an Omohundro Digital Collections Fellowship to expand our Shopping Stories project! In partnership with the New York Public Library, we requested and received digital copies of five Alexandria store ledgers that cover the years 1770-1785 of merchants Robert T. Hooe and his various business partners (1770-1784), plus John Mills (1775-1785), both Glassford competitors with stores in Alexandria.[1]
Because of our enthusiasm for this collection, we also sought and received a Historic Alexandria Foundation grant to digitize three additional ledgers, as well as to work with From the Page to begin transcribing all the ledgers. These works will bring the project into the early Federal period (1780s) and will showcase the changing shopping habits of the Alexandria community as they transitioned from British subjects to American citizens. We hope the crowdsourcing platform will allow us to involve the larger community and give the project a wider audience.
And in case you are wondering, the digital images of the ledgers will be permanently hosted in NYPL's Digital Collections and the resulting transcripts and data with History Revealed's Shopping Stories project.
We are currently beta-testing our collection for transcribing in From the Page and look forward to announcing its launch in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!
[1] NYPL has 12 ledgers and 1 letterbook as part of its "Alexandria, Virginia account books, 1770-1887" collection (MssCol 3584).
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