The following description is from the preface to the digital version of the book and was written by Terry Meyers.

Daybook; 1850-1866; of Richard M. Bucktrout, merchant and mortician at Williamsburg, Va. Richard Manning Bucktrout's meticulous entries in his Daybook and Ledger form a diary, a detailed account of daily life and death in a small, but historically important, Virginia town for sixteen years before, during, and briefly after the Civil War. Though weak on spelling (his accent can often be inferred from his spellings), Bucktrout commanded the precision of not only the businessman, but of the writer.

Social historians will find useful information, such as the names and wage rates in Bucktrout's seemingly mundane lists of firewood sold and delivered, and the number of days he hires out his slave (William Waller), to work on the city's streets or for local farmers. Even the accounts of rents he Bucktrout received and the barter sometimes involved will be of interest. A number of entries detail the upkeep and repairs of the Eastern Lunatic Asylum, where Bucktrout for some years had a maintenance contract.

But perhaps most fascinating are the funeral records. Here Bucktrout's precision is especially captivating as he records services and costs and identifies the families involved, noting their race (if they are not white) and their status (if they are free blacks). In addition to mentions of disease, if there is anything unusual about a death, Bucktrout puts it down. He tells of the landowner who announces he is "going home" before he walks to his barn and hangs himself. We hear as well about throat-slitting suicide, murder, and the hunter whose rifle discharges into his back as he drags the gun through brush. Though Bucktrout sometimes records where the body is buried, many of the locations can not be found today (one exception may be the burials of the Debress family [also spelled by Bucktrout Debriss]; those may have taken place at their family cemetery, located just steps north of the Williamsburg Inn Bathhouse).

As the Civil War engulfed Williamsburg, soldiers from all over the Confederacy died in the city's many hospitals. Bucktrout's invoices for the burials, each carefully addressed to the Confederate States of America, will be of particular interest to genealogists. He almost always records the name, rank, and military unit of the soldier and sometimes adds the circumstances of the man's death. And he tells precisely which grave the body lies in at Cedar Grove. the Williamsburg municipal cemetery. These burial invoices in some instances may be the only proof of the soldier's service; the Confederacy had not yet fully organized its record keeping. Bucktrout's careful accounting disproves the local tradition that the fallen Confederates lay in a common grave.

Since the 1920s, extraordinary resources and effort have gone to the exploration and reconstruction of 18th century Williamsburg, the Colonial Capital, but the 19th century is largely missing. Bucktrout's Daybook and Ledger may well be to 19th century Williamsburg what the Frenchman's Map is to the 18th.

The above description is from the preface to the digital version of the book and was written by Terry Meyers.