Box, Henry and Pettit, A.S. Account Ledger

Henry Box (born c.1832) owned a general store in Hempstead, N.Y. In 1854, he married Margaret A. Jackson at Christ’s Presbyterian Church at South Hempstead, N.Y., and  they had three children: Hattie A. (1855-1943), Georgianna (1857-1938), and Henry (born c.1859), who died in infancy.In 1882, Hattie A. Box married Albert S. (“A.S.”) Pettit (1851-1935), who was also born in Hempstead, N.Y. The Pettit’s had four children: Stanley A. (b.1883), Walter R. (b.1886), Dora or Dorothy, and Margarite G. Box. The Pettit’s, who were both employed by the Long Island Railroad, were living in Westbury, N.Y., when Albert, then a station agent, was transferred to Fairground, N.Y. (present-day Huntington Station) in the early 1880s. In the mid-1880s, Albert and Hattie established a coal and lumber firm that they would go on to run through the late 1910s. Their two sons later joined them in the family business, which eventually was named A.S. Pettit & Sons, Inc.

The collection is composed of one account ledger book, the first thirty-two pages of which have clippings of poems glued to them. Following those are one hundred and fifty-three pages of transactions from Henry Box’s general store. The transactions, which span the years 1857-1858, document the sale of a variety of items, including groceries, beef, butter, sundries and feed. There are then twenty-five pages of entries written by Box’s son-in-law, A.S. Pettit. These entries document his company’s sale of different kinds of coal in 1886 and 1887.

The ledger also contained a number of loose items, including freight and sales receipts from 1887-1888 and general printed materials.