Ledgers and Accounting Books

The Nimitz Hotel Accounting Books Collection contains ledgers, register books, and daybooks that document the financial operations and guest activity of the Nimitz Hotel in Fredericksburg, Texas, from 1853 to 1926. These volumes record guest names, hometowns, dates of stay, room assignments, and, in some cases, company affiliations, illustrating patterns of travel and lodging over more than seventy years. Several register books are custom-made and include physical features such as blotting paper, sketches, and printed advertisements, or survive only in fragmentary form, reflecting their practical use and period commercial practices.

Financial records in the collection include ledgers and daybooks that document guest charges, payments, hotel expenditures, and daily purchases from the hotel’s saloon and general store between 1877 and 1883. An accountant’s book spanning 1918 to 1926 demonstrates the continued evolution of hotel bookkeeping into the twentieth century. Together, these materials offer insight into the business operations, hospitality practices, and local economic life of Fredericksburg, Texas, across the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.