PBA Galleries

[52] pp. 22x16.4 cm (8½x6½"), side stitched wraps. Photograph laid in.

Book kept by the Moody family of Essex County, Massachusetts. Initially kept by Nathaniel Moody whose ownership inscription is dated December 18th, 1790. Book also bears the name of Silas Moody who may have also used the book. The neighboring seacoast communities of Salisbury and Newbury are both referenced along with the Moody ownership signatures. The Moodys were among the earliest settlers in Essex County, with family patriarch William Moody arriving in Boston from Southampton, England in 1634. Historical records indicate William Moody settled in Newbury the following year where he was admitted as a Freemason in May of 1635. Laid-in is a mounted photograph dated 1898 and showing three adults, "Gilman, Blanche & Annie" posing in the Pearson sitting room in the neighboring Essex County city of Newburyport. The Moody and Pearson families may have been related.

Manuscript entries here cover a myriad of math-related subjects along with a manuscript deed. First two pages comprise language describing the sale of "land laying in Newbury...containing thirty acres". Math subjects receiving attention on book include numeration and pence tables, addition of integers and of money, avoirdupois, troy, and apothecary weights, cloth, liquid, and long measures, time, subtraction, multiplication, division, reduction, tare and tret, the golden rule, rule of three inverse, double rule of three, double rule of three inverse, rules of practice, simple interest, etc. Word problems found throughout book include various commodities such as gallons of brandy, firkins of butter, pounds of tea, etc. Currencies of the period are also used here such as pounds sterling, guineas, and gold coins known as pistoles.