Ledger contains the farm records and other notes kept by John Milton Cotten, 1876-1881, on his farms near Falkland, N.C. The ledger contains various kinds of records and accounts for Cotten's two farms, Cottondale and Southwood, including a proposal for crop rotation, the plan and results of an experiment with different varieties of cotton, and detailed records of the work done, debts and credits and amount paid to his hired laborers. Also in the ledger is a diary in which Cotten recorded farm activities, weather, his own health and that of his wife, church and Grange eetings, and other events for April, May, and December 1876, and April through August of 1880 and 1881. Cotten used this ledger as "family record" where he summarized important events back to 1871, such as the purchase of his farm, baptisms, the destruction of his house by fire, and joining the Grange. Mixed in with farm records are Cotten's reminiscences of his time fighting with the Confederate army in the Battle of Bentonville, N.C., and elsewhere in eastern North Carolina as a teenager. The book also contains pages of copied Bible verses, several versions of a letter urging changes in North Carolina's fencing laws, a "receipt for hog cholory," and the beginning of a story called "The Duke and the Galley Slaves, " perhaps copied out by a child. The collection includes a transcription of much of the ledger and two photographs, one of John Milton Cotten and a woman (perhaps his second wife, Fannie Thomas Cotten) and one of the house in which the ledger was found.
