Content Note

This volume was received by the Public Records Office in 1936 from C. Lloyd Fell, Hunterdon County Clerk. Fell referred to it at that time as a store account book of Aaron Prall from Amwell Township which had been used as "Exhibit O" in a legal case. No details of the dispute (i.e., the names of the litigants) were mentioned. That the ledger was used by an Aaron Prall is confirmed by work accounts found in the latter pages. The volume also contains a copy of the 1795 inventory of the estate of Elizabeth Prall, for which Aaron was an administrator. Elizabeth was apparently the widow of Benjamin Prall and therefore an aunt to Aaron Prall (1763-1847), the son of James and Deborah (Whitson) Prall.*

The general store accounts found in the front of the volume were kept at Amwell from 1774 into the 1780s. These early records, of course, predate Aaron's activities as an adult and apparently belonged to his uncle, Benjamin Prall, who is known to have operated a general store (see A History of East Amwell, 1700-1800 by the East Amwell Bicentennial Committee, 1976, pp. 57, 58 and 83). This is supported by the similarity of the handwriting in the accounts and that in the inventory of the estate of Joseph Reed (see Archives' file #991J), taken by Benjamin Prall. The accounts record the customers' names, descriptions of goods purchased (e.g., spices, rum, fabric, nails, wood), the prices, and the bill totals.

* [The Prall Family by Richard Dwight Prall (1990), pp. 48, 49 and 63, confuses the widow Elizabeth Prall with Benjamin's daughter, Elizabeth (Prall) Atkinson].

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