Knott & Hollingsworth buy 8 bales on October 3 — 4,167 lbs at 35 cents per pound, $1,458.45. They buy 14 more on December 9 — 7,149 lbs at 35 cents, $2,514.15. Twenty-two bales total, $3,972.60. The last pre-war cotton price in the record was 10 cents in 1861. The price in 1863 is 35 cents — three and a half times higher. The Confederate dollar behind that 35 cents is not the same as the pre-war dollar. The estate records the nominal figures. The real value is a different calculation.

The brand on the bales is J.A.B. and R.J.B. — two brands on the December sale, suggesting cotton from two different sources or two different crops pressed together. The estate has been running food crops since 1862. The cotton that went to market in 1863 was grown and ginned alongside pindars and corn and stock peas.

1,600 bushels of corn at $2.10 per bushel — $3,360.00 in a single transaction. The same crop sold to the Confederate government in March 1863 at $1.25 a bushel. In nine months the corn price has risen from $1.25 to $2.10. The plantation produced and sold food at whatever the market set, to whatever buyer would pay it. The ledger records the bushels and the price. It does not record who needed the corn or what became of it.

Six separate tax receipts across October through January. Confederate tax — $1,125.84, paid October 3 to J.W. Mann, District Collector. State tax — $103.02, paid October 31 to A.F. Ingalls, Tax Collector. Soldiers tax — $151.50, paid November 26 to E.E. Davis, Collector. Potato tithe commutation — $23.00, paid January 23 to James A. Pringle, Agent Depot No. 8. Income tax — $39.60, paid January 23 to J.W. Mann. Cattle tax — $11.50, paid January 23.

Total: $1,454.46. The estate paid more in taxes in this single year than in all pre-war years combined. Each receipt names a different collector, a different tax category, a different authority. The plantation at Wilna is being taxed by a government fighting a war.

S.J. Fordham, Jailor, receives $4.05: taking charge and putting in jail, $1.80; taking out, $.90; dieting 3 days, $1.35. Cornelius Bryan is in the Macon jail for three days in April 1863. The charge is not stated. The release is not explained. The $4.05 is paid by the estate and recorded as Voucher 1. Three months later, the estate pays $500 to the Confederate Quartermaster to exempt Cornelius as plantation overseer.

Quarter Master's Department, Macon, Georgia, July 28, 1863. Received of R.C. Bryan, Administrator of the Estate of James A. Bryan, five hundred dollars to exempt C.P. Bryan as overseer on said estate. Signed: J.M. Moore, Captain and A.Q.M. The Confederate government required plantations employing twenty or more enslaved people to have a white male overseer exempt from military service — the so-called Twenty Negro Law. The estate pays $500 to maintain Cornelius in the overseer role. The plantation needs a manager. The price is $500.

June 10, 1863: Ira Hugh Bryan signs for eight sacks of salt — $200.00. Twenty-five dollars a sack. March 1, 1864: Asher Ayres receives $450 for two barrels of salt, 600 lbs total — 75 cents per pound. The estate paid roughly two dollars for a full sack of salt before the war. In June 1863 it pays $25. By March 1864 it pays $450 for 600 lbs. The same commodity, the same use — curing meat, preserving food — at prices that mark a supply chain under severe strain.

L.D. Carpenter, Dentist, Perry, Georgia, February 1864: 19 gold fillings, extracting and other work for Laura Bryan — $450.00. Five gold fillings for Honora Bryan — $100.00. Total: $550.00. Two Bryan sisters in the dentist's chair in Perry in February 1864. Gold fillings at wartime prices — the dental work that would have cost a fraction of this before the blockade now costs $550 for two patients. The estate pays it. L.D. Carpenter signs the receipt. The ledger moves to the next entry.

Two leather purchases document the supply chain's state. Roberts, Dunlap & Co. in Macon: 27½ lbs sole leather at $10 per pound — $275.00, December 17. Joseph Tooke dresses nineteen sides of leather — $38.00, January 1, 1864. The plantation is processing its own hides through Tooke's operation and buying finished sole leather from Macon at wartime prices. Before the war, shoes were purchased ready-made from Macon suppliers for $1.00 to $1.50 a pair. The raw material now costs $275 for enough leather to sole a season's worth of footwear.