Scope and Contents From the Collection: 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....