Eighteenth-century store ledgers detail tabular data: recording purchases, account holders, and payments. These transactions are very different from the typical prose of a letter or diary entry, however, they include as much, if not more, significant information to assist in the understanding of the past given they describe numerous people, places, objects, economies, politics, religion, etc., all from a single community. Ledgers especially reveal insights into the lives of less recognized members of a community, like women and the enslaved, through their accounts and purchases by and on behalf of them by others.

To date, most research using ledgers (whether it be for a store, tradesperson, or individual) selects the most significant people or specific elements without attempting to understand the community in its entirety. Using store ledgers, History Revealed through its Shopping Stories project hopes to develop a prosopography to uncover consumer interests, lives, and the larger community of people in the 18th century with its present focus on Virginia stores, specifically in Colchester and Alexandria. This phase of the project expands the time period under consideration to better understand the Alexandria community and its consumer habits right before the Revolution and beyond by focusing on store ledgers from 1770-1802.