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Nelson Smith was born in Williamstown, Massachusetts, late in the year 1810, the first child of Justin and Rebecca Smith of Pownal, Vt., who married the following June. In his early thirties, Nelson married Sallena Burnett of Granby and moved to the Pioneer Valley, and when Burnett's father, Bela, died in 1846, Smith inherited the family farm of 125 acres. Now situated on Burnett Street, the farm became home for the Smiths, who raised a family of at least seven children, including daughters Mary and Eliza and sons Lewis, Osmun, Harvey, Willard, and Edson.
Nelson Smith died of kidney disease in Granby, Mass., on July 15, 1892, aged 81.
This slender book of accounts includes records of Smith's financial transactions at a time in the 1830s when he was living in South Hadley, Mass. These include entries for rent, records of hiring out for work at a dairying, at Josiah W. Goodman's brickyard (at a salary of $32 per month), or for unspecified labor. Other entries record the sale of tallow, cider, cordwood, rye, turnips, and other commodities. .
The collection is open for research.
Provenance not recorded.
Processed by I. Eliot Wentworth, Feb. 2018.