Between their hand-marbled covers and the paper labels at the center of those covers, these are, as a set, just about the loveliest old notebooks I've ever seen. Who cares what's inside, I just want to lay them out and look at them! What they are is Sunday School attendance registers from the 1880s, specifically "One Year Class Books For Sunday School Teachers's Minutes" published by the American Sunday School Union, Philadelphia. A few pages of printed instruction inside, then handwritten student lists and teacher's names, with dashes and dots tracking who showed up and who was absent. (Some students never came at all!) And tucked inside one of them a 1889 letter from a district supervisor to the head of the Peter's school in Germansville, PA (I believe I've read that section of the letter correctly; in Heidelberg Township, Lehigh County) proposing an upcoming visit (on Valentine's Day!) with the intent of judging "the workings of a school in all respects, and the surroundings of the school," in order to "be able to do it the most good." As such, "it is best the teacher does not know in advance the date of the proposed visit." Lots one could dig into here, especially in terms of families in and around  Germansville at that time, but I must say I love these first and foremost just as beautiful objects!

Each 6 1/2" X 3 7/8" and in beautiful condition. Sold as set of six. I've just minimally documented the interior pages here, but each was completed, and tracks attendance over several pages, usually along with some additional notes on a final "memorandum" page.