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Jemima Baker
Perspectives Through Account Book Records (1835-1865)

The account book kept by Jemima Baker during the early to mid-nineteenth century is a significant record of economic history and community life in the Glen Cove area. As a farmer, Baker documented financial transactions of goods and services both paid and bartered with her neighbors. Through the study of her records, much information can be gleaned about the rates and wages of labor, the availability and cost of manufactured goods, and the production and sale of farm products. The account’s additional inclusion of poems reads somewhat like a diary.

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Cowhide Account Book

In 1818, Jemima Cock of Mill Neck (1796-1872) married Simeon Baker, an English ship captain who she met through her brother-in-law, John Allen. She was twenty-two, and he at thirty-nine was seventeen years her senior.

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Entries

Primarily based in the NYC area, Simeon Baker sailed throughout the U.S. Eastern seaboard, West Indies, South America, and Europe. Two handwritings found in the book suggest it was first used by Simeon and later by Jemima. The account book spanned the period between 1833-1865 and documented the range of business transactions. It was mostly used to keep accounts; however, random entries depict Baker's interests and reflect details of community life.

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Disbursements for Jupiter (July 22, 1808 London to Philadelphia - John Towers owner

Initial pages of the account book pertained to payments made from The Jupiter, a ship captained by Simeon Baker, Jemima's husband. The ship made several transatlantic crossings from England starting in 1808. This entry showed disbursements at various ports from its 1809 voyage from London to Philadelphia. They included port charges, back wages, and repair costs for ballasts and oars. Supplies restocked at port contained 10 gallons of brandy for the sailors, bushels of peas, beef, and fish.

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Cock Family Genealogy

Jemima was the youngest of thirteen children born to Thomas Cock and Mary Smith. In their three years of marriage, Jemima and Simeon Baker did not have any children. He died in 1821 leaving her a widow at age 25. She never remarried. In 1821, Freelove, Jemima's sister, named her newborn after Simeon, but sadly the child died in infancy.

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Cure for Cancer

This formula for a cancer cure was copied from the Gunn's New Family Physician, or Home Book of Health: Forming a Complete Household Guide...presenting a manual for nursing the sick, and describing minutely the properties and uses of hundreds of well-known medicinal plants : with supplementary treatises on anatomy, physiology, and hygiene, on domestic and sanitary economy, and on physical culture and development, a popular medicine book first published in 1864.

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"American Forest Girl" by Felicia Hemans in 1828

Jemima copied poems into her account book. An excerpt from "The American Forest Girl" by Felicia Hemans is meticulously transcribed. Like Hemans, Baker was married to a sea captain. Despite the extended travels of both seafaring husbands, neither woman ventured far from their birthplace. Much of Heman's poetry romanticized womanly roles relationships, and celebrated familial ideals. In this allegorical poem about slavery, the protagonist is an American Native girl who saves an English captive.

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1832 Prices

Butter $0.19 per lb Bushel of clams $0.50 Tea $0.69 per lb 25 lbs of white sugar $2.71 Bushel of wheat in August $1.25 Quarter of lamb $0.63

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1862 Wages

Wheeling asparagus $1.50 Pressing 76 bales of hay $5.96

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1856 Prices

Beef $0.10 per lb Plank for kitchen floor $0.23 Yard of silk $1.24 Linen handkerchief $0.15 Bushel of wheat in December $13

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Gravestone

Jemima, along with her husband who died in 1821, is buried in Brookville Cemetery at the corner of Rte 25A and Wolver Hollow Road in Glen Head. The inscription reads, "Jemima Baker March 5, 1872 AE 75 yrs 7 mo & 11 ds."