In a recent posting, I provided a digital image of the sale bill (also called an account) from the sale of the personal property of Charles Brooks of Itawamba County, Mississippi. The sale was conducted by Charles’s son James M. Brooks, who administered his father’s estate. As the posting I’ve just linked tells you, the sale account is filed in the loose-papers estate file of Charles Brooks in Itawamba County, Mississippi (Itawamba County, Mississippi, Loose-Papers Estate Packets #281). Since accounts of estate sales were usually written by the person administering an estate, I assume that James M. Brooks wrote this sale account, though it’s not signed. As the previous posting also indicates, the sale account is not dated, but the sale seems to have taken place between 23 December 1861 and 27 January 1862.

After I shared that sale bill, it has nagged at me that I did not offer readers a guide to misspelled words in it. The sale account contains quite a few phonetic spellings, and as a result, many readers may not be able to make out words in the sale bill. Here’s my guide to some misspellings I spot:

Sithe & cradol = scythe and cradle

Lot of cotin = lot of cotton

Par Sadolbags = pair [of] saddlebags

Muly bull = muley bull

Trasher = thresher

Shep = sheep

Shots = shoats

Coalt = colt

Pare stilyards = pair [of] steelyards

I hope this guide to misspelled words in the sale bill will help readers trying to make out what it says.