The records consist of three account books documenting a general store near Jeremiah Brown's (1749-1831) mills in Little Britain, Pennsylvania. Brown was a partial partner. The first volume is a Daybook or Journal dating from 1799 to 1803. The second volume is Ledger A dating from 1796 to 1800, and the third is Ledger B dating from 1799 to 1807. The last volume contains the beginning of an account for Brown's river property dated 1820. By this time, the volume was either kept by him or a clerk in his employ.

The account books depict a well-developed rural economy about fifty or sixty years after initial settlement. The store was a major center of exchange, which included a mix of cash and barter transactions, the latter including both goods and labor. Generally, local products such as flour, grain, tobacco, leather, flaxseed, linseed oil, and rags for paper are being exchanged for imports such as rum, sugar, coffee, textiles, and other manufactures. The local customers included farmers and various craftsmen and others who trade labor or wild animal pelts for goods. Entries for Levi Hollingsworth & Son, merchants at Philadelphia and Christiana Bridge, and for Trasel & Matlack, grocers, and Taylor & Newbold, merchants of Philadelphia, show the area's primary link to the larger economy.

Of particular interest are the many entries for Black Americans. There were about two dozen enslaved people and an equal number of free Blacks in Little Britain Township in 1790, but 139 free Blacks and three enslaved Black people by 1810. The Quaker areas of southern Lancaster County were a safe place for enslaved people who were deemed "fugitives" from Maryland, even before the establishment of the Underground Railroad.

The account books give a detailed picture of production and consumption patterns of both Black and White residents of Little Britain Township at the beginning of the nineteenth century.