James A. Bryan died March 22, 1847. In 1849, Holmes supplied a marble marker for $149.40. In November 1860, thirteen years after his death, the estate commissions a permanent monument. Four separate transactions, four separate vendors. Summey & Warlick of Macon: one six-foot marble top with 328 carved letters — $43.12, paid November 7. The Macon & Western Railroad: freight on one box of marble, 558 pounds — $2.23, paid October 30. William L. Longley of Macon: 22 feet of iron railing and 4 granite blocks — $67.50, paid November 10. Nathan Weed of Savannah: iron bars for installation — $10.23, paid November 27. Total: $123.08.

The iron fittings came from Savannah by rail. The marble came from the stonecutters in Macon. The railing was cut to the length of the plot. A six-foot marble top with 328 letters is a substantial monument — the inscription includes birth and death dates, and two passages of scripture. The monument stands in the family cemetery on the property today. It marks the man whose estate generated every document in this record.

January 31, 1861: Harris & Ross sell 16 bales to E.A. Wilcox — 7,932 lbs at 10⅛ cents, $790.11 net. Georgia seceded twelve days before this sale. February 6: Tooke & Cooper at the Houston Factory takes 10 bales directly — $446.00. March 30: Adams & Reynolds sell 35 bales to John S. Hoye — 17,212 lbs at 10 cents, $1,677.45 net after storage and weighing. Total: 61 bales, $2,913.56.

The 35-bale March sale settles in Macon on March 30, 1861. Fort Sumter falls April 12. The cotton that was grown on the Sandbed Road, ginned, pressed, branded J.A.B., hauled across the Toby Sofky bridge to Cotton Avenue in Macon — was sold, or still in the warehouse, thirteen days before the first shots of the war. The ledger records the sale. It records the buyer's name. It does not record what happened next.

March 10, 1860: Negro Red for coal — $3.00. This is Redick, appraised at $800 in 1847 — the highest individual value in the inventory. He appeared first by name in March 1857 as Redick at the coal kiln. By 1860 the returns use the shortened name. The 1861 inventory lists him as Red at $1,000.

May 26, 1860: Negroes Bob and Jake hewing — $2.00. Bob was received into Sand Ridge Baptist Church in 1844, appraised at $300 in 1847. May 26, 1860 is his last confirmed appearance in the returns. Jake appears here for the first and only time in the entire record. Two men doing skilled timber work on the same day — one with sixteen years documented, one with a single entry.

October 28, 1860 and March 16, 1861: Charles for coal — $1.00, then $1.25. Charles is hired out annually through Cornelius with Claiborne and Matilda. He is also producing coal at the kiln independently. Two separate economic relationships in the same year, documented through two separate accounting channels.

Catharine P. Bryan is the most documented individual in the 1860 return. March 22: a berege robe, silk rep, fringe, and linen from J.N. Stein & Co. — $56.93. Two complete dress outfits with matching trim, in one Macon visit. Same day: drip caps from S.R. Audoin — $3.25, architectural trim for windows or doors on the house. April: a hat from Mrs. S. Audoin, $4.00. April 20: two hats at $6.00 each from M. Damour — $12.00. Two millinery visits in one April, $16 in hats.

August: Dr. F. Garke fills sixteen teeth — $40.00 plus brush and powder, $43.50 total. October: a cloth cloak and two pairs of gloves from Elias Einstein, $10.00. March 1861: a cameo pin from E.J. Johnston & Co., $8.00. Catharine P. Bryan is twenty-two years old in 1860. She is dressed for whatever that year brings. The ledger records every item.

The account current, between a postage entry in July and estate business expenses in September: Wiley Leverett May Party — $1.50. A social event called a May Party, organized or connected to Wiley Leverett, settled in August — the payment deferred from the event itself, which would have been in May. A May Party in the antebellum South was a seasonal outdoor celebration. The dollar fifty is the only record of it. Leverett's identity is not established in any document in the file. The party happened. The ledger paid for it.

J.N. Davis Sr. receives $2.00 for the Southern Literary Companion. He signs the receipt as "Ed. Lit. Comp." — he is the editor of the paper, published in Newnan, Georgia. Georgia seceded thirty-two days before this payment. The Bryan household renews its subscription to a literary newspaper while the state prepares for war. The same Davis family operates the Houston Factory — J.H. Davis & Son. The commercial and cultural worlds of the Bryan plantation run through the same local network: the mill that buys the cotton, the editor who publishes the paper, the commissioner who will certify the 1866 distribution.

The 1860 return closes with a balance in favor of the estate of $8,263.19 — the highest balance in the record's history, higher even than the $6,633.92 that opened 1860. Robert C. Bryan files the return on April 10, 1861. Fort Sumter falls April 12. The estate that James A. Bryan left with debts in 1847 is worth more in April 1861 than it has ever been. What the next four years will do to that balance — to the cotton market, to the plantation's labor, to the land itself — is not in this document. The 1860 return ends here. The 1861 return begins.