Collection is open for research.
Permission to publish material from James and Rosa Evans Store Ledgers must be obtained from Special Collections, Virginia Tech.
Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: James and Rosa Evans Store Ledgers, Ms2015-009, Special Collections, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Va.
The collection was donated to Special Collections in 2014.
The processing, arrangement, and description of the James and Rosa Evans Store Ledgers was completed in March 2015.
James Ransom Evans was born in November 1874 in Lee County, Virginia. In 1900, he married Rosa Belle Kirk (also born in Lee County, in 1879. By 1919, the couple owned a general store in the Pennington Gap, Virginia, area, that they ran in to the 1930s. James died in 1952; Rosa died in 1970. Both James and Rosa are buried in Pennington Gap, Virginia.
This collection consists of 2 ledgers, one from 1919-1920 and the other from 1932-1934. The ledgers contain purchases and payments from the patrons of a general store owned by James and Rosa Evans in the Pennington Gap--St. Charles area of Virginia. A receipt from the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company was found in the 1919 ledger detailing the purchase of 15 boxes of tobacco including Yellow Jackets and Camels. Most debts were paid in cash with only a very few paying with checks. The 1932 ledger contained notes from patrons asking for the Evans to send them certain items, including a note from Pearl Haynes asking for "5 pairs of overhalls....and she would pay in a week or two." Products during this time were mainly necessities with fewer luxury items such as candy as opposed to the 1919 ledger.
The ledgers are arranged chronologically.