The store was an old plantation store in central Louisiana, and the books I got cover from the early teens to the mid-1930s. The demographics of this area have completely changed, and a lot of the tenant families who bought there left this area years ago. The books, for the most part, are old oversize leather-bound ledgers, one of which does regular duty every year as Santa's Logbook in my wife's Pre-K class. And yes, I sorely regret that I did not get all the books because as you point out, there was information in them that is not available anywhere else, and a lot of it burnt up in that pile.