Most of the entries in this volume date from the 1793 to 1803 and are the accounts of  Deacon John Irish of Middletown. They document buying and selling of crops and livestock, including corn, butter, potatoes, cheese, hay, sheep and horses. In a few instances purchases and sales of shoes, silk, and other household items are documented.

A few entries in the first and final few pages of the book date from 1770 to 1771, and are the accounts of Captain Henry Tillinghast, John Irish's father-in-law. Captain Tillinghast's entries include accounts from voyages to London and Senegal. Most accounts are for wages and sundry items, but there is one entry for the purchase of a child on May 23, 1771: "Bought of John Block in Senegall one Boy Slave" for £16. Captain Tillinghast is known to have participated in the slave trade, as contemporaneously documented in the Newport Mercury, correspondence and court records, and later described in Jay Coughtry's The Notorious Triangle.