A window was opened in early 2007 on a prominent eighteenth-century Salem cabinetmaker’s business with the discovery of the ledgers of Nathaniel Gould (1734–1781) at the Massachusetts Historical Society. The documents consist of two day, or waste, books, the first with entries from 1758–1763 and the second covering the period 1767–1784.1 A third book, a ledger of accounts on credit, covers the years 1763–1784 and partially fills in the four missing years of the day books. These documents reveal a highly competent businessman who sold furniture to the highest level of Salem society, in particular, the prominent Cabot family, one of the wealthiest shipping and merchant families of New England.
