A mineralogist and chemist associated with the University of Pennsylvania (1822-1828), William H. Keating was a central figure in the scientific community in Philadelphia during the 1820s and 1830s. Active in the American Philosophical Society and Academy of Natural Sciences, and a founding member of the Franklin Institute, Keating was official geologist on Stephen Harriman Long's expedition to the Great Lakes in 1823 and spent three years in the late 1820s surveying the mineral resources of Mexico. The William H. Keating notebooks include three cash books (daybooks of cash expenditures, 1830-1839) and a book containing surveys of Keating lands in Potter County, most undertaken by Silas McCarty for William's father John Keating (1801-1818). The surveys associated with John Keating are an interesting record of land investment and speculation in the northern tier of Pennsylvania. William Keating's meticulous cash books provide a detailed record of his domestic expenses, philanthropic involvements (donations to the Catholic Church, the Prison Society), his reading (newspapers and books are listed individually), socializing (theatre tickets, Assembly fees), and a variety of miscellaneous expenditures ranging from purchase of a lithograph of Dugald Stewart to a table lamp from C. Cornelius. His accounts also include lists of servant's wages and wages for washerwomen.

The two volumes consist of a daybook and ledger. The first volume, a daybook, is a chronological record of sales, with names of purchasers.

This volume is the account book of a Philadelphia machine shop ("screws, taps and dies") operated by Winner and N. Barrows, which made such items as bolts, iron rods, pins, and rivets. Also included are charges and time requirements for the work done.

Beginning in about 1830, John F. Fenton began a thriving business as a wheelwright in Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He married Mary Ann Ring, also of Newtown, on November 26, 1834, and was elected a County Commissioner in the late 1850s. These Day Books provide a detailed record of work performed by Fenton between 1830 and 1844, primarily the manufacture or repair of wagons and wheels (double trees, wagon tongues, sideboards, spokes, rims), with very occasional reference to carriages.

This daybook records purchases and payments for sugar, tobacco, clothing, nails, and shipments of goods to the West Indies, by John Bard, Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Hamilton, Israel Pemberton, William Rawle, and Charles Read.

In addition to family and business correspondence, the Charles Nicoll Bancker Family Papers contains various documents, such as a furniture inventory volume (30pp.); a Daybook, 1795-1800 (120pp.); and a very interesting journal (unidentified, but by one of the Banckers, and filed under "Description of a trip..."), from New York to Albany and back, between July 20-Aug. 15, 1793 (1 vol., 31 pp.). It contains detailed observations of the Hudson River and the towns along the way. Bancker was involved in business and trade prior to 1826, and in insurance after that date, so there is material relating to those topics in this collection. He owned a substantial library of the period, which was used by Charles Wilkes's Expedition after 1837 (see Reynell Coates to Bancker). This library, along with Bancker's notable scientific instrument collection, was sold after his death and there are published auction catalogues in the collection. There is much family correspondence from: Anne E. Bancker, Charles Gerard Bancker, Evert Bancker, Sarah U. Bancker, Violetta Bancker Talbot, Elizabeth Bancker Teackle, and John Teackle.