This small collection consists of billheads, a type of itemized receipt used during the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. The billhead served as proof of delivery. Many billheads are decorated along the top with steel engravings. The billheads were issued by a wide variety of stores to W. Adams & Son primarily between 1880 and 1887. The materials in this collection are incomplete, but they provide descriptions of goods and prices during that time period. The bulk of the receipts are for fabric, clothing, and food items.

The collection is arranged into twelve series by store type: Books, paper, and publishers; Boots and shoes; Building materials; Carpets and upholstery; Confectionery and crackers; Druggists; Dry goods, fabrics, and fancy goods; Feed and seed; Flour, groceries, and provisions; Hardware; Travel bags and trunks; and Additional billheads. Each series includes a detailed list of the items purchased, although these lists are neither complete nor exhaustive.

The Books, paper, and publishers series includes purchases of various types of paper, journals, Bibles, educational books, stationery, pens, pencils, and pencil holders. The Boots and shoes series consists of receipts for ladies' and men's footwear, such as sandshoes, which were a type of sports shoe; ladies' and men's butt soles, which were a type of high-quality sole; boots; and various leather goods.

The Building materials series comprises sellers of paint, varnish, oil, shingles, lead, putty, cement, lime, brackets, and stove pipes. There is some overlap between items sold by these businesses and those contained in the Druggists series.

The Carpets and upholstery series comprises receipts for tapestries, matting, paper, curtains, oil cloths, upholstery fabric, and rugs. The Confectionery and crackers series consists of purchases of candy, cigars, soda, crackers, and flour. The Druggists series includes receipts for buck dye, Bull's cough cure, plaster, Ayer's pills, varnish, flour, sugar, ginger, Vaseline, Brown's Iron Bitters, acid salicylic pills, potash, perfume, dyes, sulfur bitters, opium, morphine, cough syrup, saltpeter, insect powder, oxalic acid, snuff, borax, plaster, and wax. The Dry goods, fabrics, and fancy goods series includes a wide variety of items; some stores sold only fabrics and clothing, while others sold additional items as well. These are listed together because the purchases from dry goods stores encompass the same materials as those from stores that focus on textiles only. Fabric purchases include satin, silk, lace, flannel, velvet, brocade, damask, gingham, canvas, linen, cashmere, felt, and cotton. Sewing notions were also purchased, including bows, ribbons, buttons, thimbles, pins, beads, elastic, tassels, corset springs, whalebone, and thread. Types of clothing and accessories bought include suits, leggings, overalls, mittens, scarves, suspenders, skirts, collars, cuffs, bustles, shawls, vests, hosiery, shirts, ties, pants, corsets, gloves, coats, belts, towels, napkins, handkerchiefs, quilts, umbrellas, hats, parasols, purses, and wallets. Other goods sold from these same stores include: pencils, pencil holders, footwear, toothbrushes, coffee, baskets, perfume, lamps, shades, lanterns, toothpicks, China, pitchers, glasses, and combs. The Feed and seed series contains billheads for corn, grass, clover, and garden seeds. The Flour, groceries, and provisions series is the largest. Some stores specialized in a specific product or a smaller group of products; specialized store receipts are included here as well. The items purchased include meats (beef, sausage, ham); fish (pollack, sardines); produce (tomatoes, pears, peaches, prunes, apricots, raisins, pumpkins, figs, potatoes, currants); condiments (jelly, horse raddish, mustard); baking supplies and spices (cooking oil, lard, sugar, salt, pepper, nutmeg, gelatin, cream of tartar, sage, molasses, cocoa, starch, chocolate); oatmeal, cheese, coffee, tea, cigars, matches, soda, paper, soap, and brooms. The Hardware series includes goods such as knobs, locks, rakes, sandpaper, hinges, bolts, screws, nails, hooks, shears, wire lines, fish lines, razors, latches, glass, saws, axes, knives, rope, crayons, and a scythe. The Travel bags and trunks series includes purchases of bags and trunks.

The Additional billheads series includes a purchase of one eleven-year-old red horse, withdrawals from the Maine Savings Bank from James M. Allen and Caroline Allen paid to W. Adams & Son, a billhead for "port," a billhead for what appears to be exports of goods, and passages for people. There are lumber stores where various types of wood were purchased, such as pine, hemlock, birch, and ash, as well as services for lumber mill work and planing boards. There are also two billheads from W. Adams & Son: one for smoking pipes sold to H.H. Ricker & Co. and the second for Mrs. Dinsmore's cough and croup syrup, sold to L.M. Brock & Co.