Trading Apples For Wagon-Making
by George Holcomb • Transcribed by Betty McClave • Edited by Alex Brooks
Tuesday, October 22, 1845: Tonight it froze quite hard and spoiled my winter apples that were not gathered.
Wednesday: We gathered apples and ground apples but they were quite frosty and this afternoon Mr. Prentice Johnson and boy picked up apples for us and stand in debt to him for the same. On this evening I went down to the old widow Morey’s and her daughter Julia paid me twelve dollars and forty cents cash and I had this last summer forty bundles of rye straw of them and I credit them 60 cents for said straw which makes thirteen dollars in all and they have agreed to pay me two dollars more which will make up the fifteen dollars that they agreed to pay me on Ezra Sackett’s house rent up to the first of April next.
Monday, Nov 3: Today I went to Pittsfield with my ox team and wagon with a load of cider. I sold a forty gallon cask near Pomeroy’s factory to one of his hands and then I sold a Frenchman two half barrels for cash, three dol and 75 cents and I left a 40 gallon cask of cider to the blacksmith Brooks and finished the bargain for him to iron the geering to my two horse lumber wagon and box the irons on and whiffletrees and to do the whole work excepting the wheels, all ready to hitch my horse on, and I do agree to pay him twenty dollars and he find the iron. Today I fetched home three more casks for him to fill.
Tuesday: Today I walked to election to Hiram W. Brown’s and voted the anti-rent ticket and Mr. Wyatt the factory man paid me four dol and 25 cents, which was what I agreed to take up with for the gray mixes wool, thirteen pounds of rolls that he spoiled carding and took them after reckoning out the carding of a small bundle of white wool of four pounds.
Thursday: Today I went to Pittsfield with my one horse wagon and carried nine bushels of apples and sold seven bushels at twenty five cents per and trusted two bushels at 33 cts, the name I did not learn. Today I carried Mr. Brooks 39 pounds of iron at five cts per, which is one dol and 95 cts, and I paid him six dol cash and he credits me for the whole.
Saturday: I went to Pittsfield with my ox team and wagon. I gave as a present a barrel of winter apples to Mr. Squires that machine and furnace man for he complained that the apples rotted bad that I sold him, to pay him for turning my two horse axletrees, but he has not got the work done yet and today I called to Nelson Tracy’s and two single whiffletrees that I had bargained with him to iron but he had not ironed them nor could conveniently at present and gave his consent for me to take them away and it would be an accomodation to me for I could have them included in the bargain with Brooks job ironing my wagon and I left said whiffletree to Brooks shop. Today quite a storm of rain, I was late home this evening in the rain with my ox team and took a bad cold.