A little notebook from almost 100 years ago

Anyone interested in Way Back When sometimes is surprised when going through family things, deciding what to keep and what to sell or donate or just get rid of. While triaging old things in my mother-in-law’s house, I came across a 3-inch by 5-inch leather-covered notebook. I don’t know who the book belonged to – one of my wife’s grandfathers, perhaps.

On the front, centered, in gold letters:

MAYER & SCHMIDT
TYLER, TEXAS
OUR CLOTHES
ARE MADE BY

SCHLOSS BROTHERS
the great
Clothing Makers.
BALTIMORE and NEW YORK

And on the back cover, also centered and in gold:
Compliments of
Mayer & Schmidt
Leading
Clothiers, Hatters, Shoers & Furnishings
Tyler, Texas

Photograph of Mayer & Schmidt store circa 1893 in Tyler at
http://www.texasescapes.com/TexasBooks/Tyler-Texas-Postcard-History.htm

Entries in the book are from to October 8, 1918, and then June 21, 1943.

Entries include:

Undated – Montgomery Ward & Co. Chicago Il., Elk Shoes, olive color, 21/2 pounds, price $2.59; Kid shoes weight 21/4 pounds price $3.19.

Plow stock, beam 4 ft, foot 2 ft 2 1/2 in, handles 4 ft.

B.M. Davis, Lockhart Tex dealer in Mebain Cotton Seed

Tobacco man O.D. Collier, Martin Tenn.

April 15, 1916

2 gallons syrup – 1.00
1 sack flour – 1.70
1 sack flour – 1.70
1 sack meal -- .58
Bill groceries – 5.63
1 sack flour – 1.70
1 brick lard -- .75
1 sack flour – 1.70
1 galon surp -- .50
1 sack flour – 1.70
1 galon syurp -- .50

Undated

Ruston, Lincoln Parish 640 acres
Homer, Claiborne Parish 1,141 acres
Columbia, Caldwell Parish 5.413
Arcadia, Bienville Parish 737 acres

Several pages list train ticket prices and destinations, meals and rooms, but no dates.

As with many old notebooks, there are more questions than answers. Why entries end in 1918 and begin again in June 1943 – maybe the writer put the book somewhere and found it 15 years later.