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three Accounting for Life Objects, Names, and Numbers 67 In late July 1801, John F. Price spotted a man crossing the river between Bedford and Franklin counties carrying a “Sack Bag filled with something on his horse.” Although he could not swear positively, witness Price some years later averred “from the shape of the article in the Bag, I have no hesitation in saying I believe they were the Books.”1 The books in question held the early 1770s accounts from the Virginia store of John Hook; the horseman was Hook’s son-in-law Bowker Preston. For six years, these documents had been the subject of litigation between Hook and his former partner David Ross, who claimed that Hook had not fully paid him when the Revolutionary War terminated their partnership. Hook had steadfastly refused to appear and produce the books for circuit court commissioners to examine and had been found in contempt. The court finally ordered a sequestration against Hook; his property would be seized until he produced the books. The stage had been set. One morning in June 1801, a group of four men gathered in the yard of John Hook’s large house in Franklin County. Three of them were court commissioners, who brought hammers and nails to board up the doors after turning Hook and his family out of the house. When they arrived with their order to inventory Hook’s property, they found wagons loaded with goods being removed from the premises, a bold act in defiance of the court’s order. Hook had also hidden the keys to the store and cellar. Hook still alleged that it was his understanding that the court order did not cover the books. Price fumed at Hook’s arrogance, but the commissioners thought it too cruel to order Hook’s innocent family from the premises. Hook invited all to dinner and the commissioners ultimately left with the standoff unresolved. When they returned the next day, the merchant at first acknowledged that he had arranged to have the books removed but then claimed that they had been stolen. According to the testimony of Price, the clerk of commissioners, the tears in his eyes “were those of a Crocodile merely shed to deceive.” Hook finally accused the commissioners of having, themselves , stolen the books after interrogating his “mulatto servant man Den- nis” or a neighbor’s slave who was Dennis’s “confident and associate” and discovering where the servant had hidden them outside the locked store.2 The saga of the books continued. After Price claimed he saw Hook’s son-in-law with the books in his saddlebags in late July, the commissioners testified in September that they had found Hook’s personal ledger on the bed in the counting room and had taken it into their possession. Somehow Hook “or some of his young men” had secretly ferreted the ledger away without their noticing and hid it with all his other books. Somehow all the missing books fell into the hands of Charles Simmons—a local “drinking man”—who promised to return them for the $30 reward Hook offered. When pressed for information about where he had obtained them, Simmons said only that he found them by a “magic rod or divine stick.” The books then appear to have been lost again. Just as the judge prepared to issue a ruling, without access to the crucial documents, Hook’s lawyer, Edmund Randolph, claimed that the books had been in his office for some time, but he needed more time to examine them. The case remained in litigation for another forty years.3 These episodes provide an entertaining and rare combination of intrigue and comedy—books whisked from behind the backs of officials, drunks with divining rods, conspiring slaves, mysterious gunnysacks, and a sprinkling of crocodile tears. But Hook’s books record far more than trouble with a former business partner. The contents of these volumes bring to life the world of goods of eighteenth-century Anglo-America—tools that built, textiles that warmed—and the process of their acquisition. They evince actions, desires , and relationships. Perhaps John Hook’s account books were charmed. They could vanish, be mysteriously whisked away by an unknown hand, hidden by slaves and their compatriots, found by a conjurer, and lost again before reappearing in the office of a jurist. They possessed great powers of truth; containing a formulaic code of words and numbers that...

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