Shopkeeper

The crossroads store sells everything the valley cannot make and hears everything it says. You keep it: the buying, the pricing, the ledger, and two people besides.

The work

• Buy, price, and sell the goods; weigh the sugar and measure the calico.
• Keep the ledger and the barter accounts in eggs and butter, and balance both.
• Manage one clerk and one roving peddler.
• Settle accounts and set credit for half the households in the hollow.

Context

• The owner's confidence is total, and so is the responsibility.
• Three on the books, including you.
• Pay is £35–48 New York currency per annum (~$90–120 in silver dollars), with rooms above the store.
• In-person, six days; the counter is the post.

Recorded in the parish register of Sleepy Hollow, autumn of 1799.

• Has kept accounts in coin and in kind, and balanced both.
• A memory for faces, credit, and grudges.
• Discretion: half the hollow's gossip clears through this counter.

Not a fit if you would repeat what you hear at the counter.

The crossroads emporium: sugar, salt, calico, crockery, and every scrap of news in the hollow.

Who we are

Three on the books — owner, one clerk, one peddler on the road — and a customer list that is simply everyone between the church and the landing.

How we work

Accounts settle in coin, eggs, or butter; we clear more barter than any ledger in the county and have never once been caught short at reckoning. Growing steadily — the peddler's route added three new lanes last year.

Who thrives here

Quick, honest people with a memory for faces, credit, and grudges, and the discretion to hold half the hollow's gossip without spending it.

Recorded in the parish register of Sleepy Hollow, autumn of 1799.