Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Dataset CreatorsTara A. Bynum, University of IowaMelina HegelheimerThe dataset is derived from Cesar Lyndon’s Sundry Account Book, 1761-1771. It collects financial transactions, activities, locations, and the names of about one hundred persons living and doing business with an enslaved man, Cesar Lyndon, in Newport, Rhode Island. The data are from an approximately thirty-five-page, string-bound book, with several individual pages belonging to Cesar Lyndon. The dataset is made from Lyndon’s dated record of financial transactions and quotidian happenings in Newport. The account book is housed at the Rhode Island Historical Society in Providence, Rhode Island.Lyndon is Sarah Searing’s husband and enslaved to Josias Lyndon of Newport, Rhode Island; Josias Lyndon is a one-term governor and a longstanding clerk of the Rhode Island General Assembly.1 Lyndon is not manumitted until the death of Josias Lyndon’s wife, Mary, in 1790, just a few years before his own death c.1794. Cesar Lyndon is literate and numerate; how or where he learned is unknown.2 By the end of the Revolutionary War, he is a member, and later secretary, of the Free African Union Society, until just before his death. He kept an account book, too, to track his sales of stuff, money, loans to and goods received from his (enslaved) friends, acquaintances, and slave-trading merchants around Newport.What remains of his account book is Lyndon’s record—in his well-formed and easy-to-read cursive—of everyday kinds of transactions. Between 1761 and 1771, Lyndon inventoried the activities and transactions of this seaside town’s merchant class as well as its enslaved and Indigenous communities.3 The register situates Lyndon as an active part of the town’s business in the trade of sugar, chocolate, rum, enslaved persons, and sundries from West Africa and the Caribbean. The names of Lyndon’s account holders are familiar around eighteenth-century Newport: Christopher Champlin, Aaron Lopez, Venter Childs, Boston Vose, Neptune Sisson, Zingo Stevens, Sarah Searing, Bess Thurston, and about ninety other names. Christopher Champlin and Aaron Lopez are among the town’s wealthiest slave-trading merchants. Venter Childs, Boston Vose, and Neptune Sisson are enslaved men and acquaintances of Lyndon who occasionally barter with or take loans from Lyndon. Their business—with each other and with Lyndon—is what makes Newport wealthy and cosmopolitan in the decade before the Revolutionary War.Lyndon records the sale of sow pigs, ketchup, pickled lobsters, quite a bit of shoe polish, lots of bushels of beets and celery root, and local and foreign-made goods. He itemizes noteworthy births, deaths, marriages, and whatever else might be thought of as memorable: a ship captain’s arrival or departure, a gathering, or the slaughtering season. When Lyndon’s two-year-old son dies on a Wednesday morning in September 1765, he notes the death in this account book. When he marries his wife, Sarah, he notes it, and when his friends Zingo Stevens and Phylis Lyndon get married, he records the date and location of the wedding. He notes too, the day after his son first falls sick with a fatal case of the bloody flux and the sale of “cake black ball” (or shoe polish) to someone named Wigneron. On a hot August day in 1766, Lyndon and eight of his friends “take a pleasant ride out” to nearby Portsmouth, Rhode Island for a pig roast; Lyndon pays good money—in what form is not entirely clear, whether specie, paper money, or commodity money—for a pig, rum, limes for punch, and a “house room.”Lyndon’s record of happenings uses common and local methods of eighteenth-century bookkeeping to track his business and his activities. The account book’s style of recordkeeping is similar to a waste book, which tracks daily transactions before those transactions are settled in a formal ledger. Waste books are commonplace, and Lyndon’s account (or waste) book is similar to the informal account books of various Rhode Island merchants such as those belonging to Aaron Lopez, Christopher Champlin, Welcome Arnold, and Brown & Benson (and sometimes Ives).4 It would suggest that, in the way of Lopez, Champlin, or Brown, Lyndon would have transferred these transactions to a formal ledger, too. Although it is unlikely that Cesar Lyndon was the only enslaved man to keep an account book, it is a rarity: an easy-to-find, well-catalogued primary source.Because this account book collects day-to-day transactions of particular account holders and is not a formalized ledger, account holders are listed atop their accounts or alongside their transactions. When Lyndon tracks an accountholder’s spending across time, he separates their debits (what they purchase) and their credits (what they pay for their purchase) in two columns; debits (dr) are on the left and credits (cr) are listed on the right. The left column—with the account holder’s name at its top—is for what is purchased. The right column is their method of payment; it is rarely cash payment, because specie or paper money is scarce. Lyndon receives pigs, skillets, a “looking glass,” and other sundries for payment.This dataset represents an enslaved man’s accounting of his everyday activities. It has a story to tell about everyday business of this bustling colonial port just as the burdens of taxation inspire the kinds of resentment that start wars. This dataset tabulates Lyndon’s bartering system, his valuation of goods and rendered services, and what he does for fun. It situates Lyndon as part of Newport’s global economy, and should be read alongside the account books of Newport’s and Providence’s merchant class for a greater sense of Lyndon’s local importance.2015-2023EnglishNewport, Rhode IslandNorth Kingstown, Rhode IslandSpringfield, MassachusettsNew YorkSurinamSavannah La Mar, JamaicaPhiladelphia, PennsylvaniaNew London, Connecticut1761-1771Account BookCesar Lyndon’s Sundry Account Book, 1761-1771, MSS 9004 Vol. 10, Box 4, 81a & 81c, 82-84, 85, Rhode Island Historical Society, Providence, Rhode Island.The Cesar Lyndon dataset transcribes information that was taken from Lyndon’s descriptions of transactions and events in his account book. It is a collection of nearly 370 entries of Lyndon’s activities. The initial transcription was word-for-word from the original source and entered into a spreadsheet.The dataset has fifteen columns that organize Lyndon’s information; the main fields include date, location, event type, paid to, paid by, and mentioned person. The dataset uses names that Lyndon provides for accountholders, acquaintances, goods (items received or purchased), and locations. The dataset uses the names as Lyndon provides them. He does not always give the full name of the accountholder, friend, or acquaintance; at times, he uses an honorific, such as mister or “Mrs.” or, because he is recording an event or transaction with friends, uses only their first names. Because he described non-financial activities and transactions, the dataset includes the kind of event: marriage, death, slaughter (of animals), financial transaction, manual labor, or travel. He provides goods and services with units of measure where necessary, which are duly recorded. He notes the financial valuation of the transaction in pounds, shillings, and pence. The dataset maintains his language because it demonstrates Lyndon’s participation in local and global economies and communities; and where Lyndon offers no name or date, entries are listed as unknown.The account book is not organized chronologically. There are some dates that only include month and year; Lyndon does not always provide the day of the week. There is a lot of repetition. Multiple pages reproduce the same transactions with the same accountholders on the same dates. The repetition is likely because Lyndon made copies of his letters and receipts, and because he moves his transactions between his daybook and a formal ledger.Dataset Repository: Harvard Dataverse, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/YM7OE6Linked Data Representation: Enslaved.orgNational Endowment for the HumanitiesRhode Island Historical SocietyMcNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of PennsylvaniaEarly Career Scholar Award, University of IowaArts and Humanities Initiative and Diversity through Distinction Fund, University of IowaJohn Carter Brown LibraryNewport Historical SocietyRichard Robinson Business History Workshop, Portland State University
Authors: Tara A. Bynum, Melina Hegelheimer, Alyssa Smith, Caroline Cheung
Institution: University of Iowa
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7130504094
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