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• 1 2020-01-21T19:16:10+00:00 Page 3 - Keeping Accounts, Ordering a Life 4 Bynum Page 3 plain 2020-02-19T16:47:20+00:00

  Lyndon records this story in numbers and words in his Sundry Account Book, housed at the Rhode Island Historical Society. Born on an uncertain date in a nameless location, Lyndon is a literate and enslaved record-keeper and mathematician. It’s not clear how Lyndon learns to read, write, add or subtract; it’s work that is similar to that of his master who, as a clerk and scrivener for the General Assembly, is literate and must also have legible penmanship. Cesar Lyndon knows how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide numbers—including those pounds, shillings, and pence of Rhode Island’s currency as well as that of New York. Just a few years before the Revolutionary War, Lyndon’s account book—as is customary, part-ledger and part-journal—collects in numbers the stories of Newport’s enslaved and freed communities and its local slave traders. It’s not a method of storytelling that a present-day reader knows to expect from an enslaved man. It’s not a prose story about freedom or escape, like those well-anthologized nineteenth-century slave narratives by Frederick Douglass or Harriet Jacobs. It’s both a literate and numerate text that does not aim to prove Lyndon’s humanity or even admit to his education. Instead, Lyndon offers us—his readers—numbers and lists as a way to read his life and the lives of those with whom he transacts business.  

  From 1761 to 1771, he uses the methods of double-entry bookkeeping to track the sale of goods and services in long and short lists of stuff, people, numbers, and events. Debits are listed on the left, and credits are noted on the right. His hatch marks or X-marks may have denoted a completed transaction or may indicate that the transaction had been copied to a more formalized (though not presently extant) ledger. 7 His transactions are not always listed in chronological order, and he doesn’t alphabetized his account holders. Lyndon’s organization fits his genre. It’s idiosyncratic and personal; it’s supposed to make sense to him. It may hint at what’s most important to Lyndon and what’s worth remembering. It gives us a glimpse into his ways of ordering his life, his accounting, and his business. He is a one-stop shop for Newport’s enslaved community as well as its seafaring merchants.   

  Though it was never meant to be printed, Lyndon’s account book glimpses the quotidian life of a man whose lists situate him and his literate and numerate reader in a greater community of traders, free and enslaved artisans and servants. Lyndon notes to whom he sells and from whom he receives all sorts of stuff: for example, pickled lobsters, sow pigs, leather breeches, ketchup (there’s a lot of ketchup). His customers return often to partake of his goods; and with every return, he itemizes their debits, their remaining balances, and of course the trinkets, textiles, or pigs that are credited to their accounts. What Lyndon leaves behind—in about thirty-two, handwritten pages—is a catalogue of lists that invites us to wonder just who Cesar Lyndon is and what he has to teach us about early American accounting and living. Because Lyndon sells various items (from rum to silver buckles), he is always counting stuff. He creates pricing and numerical value for the slaughter and sale of pigs, beets, and textiles as well as those goods and services, exchanged or received. As items are purchased, he makes note of what he receives in return for his merchandise: cash, black stockings, pickles and pickled lobsters, a linen handkerchief, or silk. He seems to delight in fine looking glasses and indulge in silver buckles. And, when money is owed to him, Lyndon writes letters to request those balances due.