Name/Title
LedgerContext
On the desk in the upstairs hall of the Neill-Cochran House Museum sits a ledger purchased c. 1918 and belonging to Bessie Rose Cochran. The ledger contains notes on household expenses from 1918-1944, including the 1923 Travis County tax bill for the 2310 San Gabriel Street property ($279.95). There is also a piece of newspaper from the June 26, 1939 edition of the Austin-American Statesman that includes comic strips of Popeye, Li'l Abner, and Little Orphan Annie. This clipping was likely saved for an article on the opposite side of the funnies titled: "Lawyers Wives Plan to Fete Bar Guests," that mentions the induction of Mrs. T. B. Cochran as an honorary member of the Texas Bar Association courtesy committee. This honor was in recognition of her status as widow of a former member of the Association, her late husband, Judge Thomas B. Cochran.
Thomas and Bessie Cochran moved to Austin in 1891 when Governor James Stephen Hogg appointed Thomas Judge of the Twenty-sixth Judicial District which included Travis County. Judge Cochran was very active in the community as a judge and later attorney, a freemason, a board of managers member at the State Lunatic Asylum, and as a husband and father of five children. He died in 1912 around his fifty-fourth birthday.
Bessie continued to live in the house for the next 40 years until her death in 1953. She hosted several family weddings here, saw sons off to war, sold parts of the property when times were tough, and made additions to the house to suit changing needs and changing times. All the while she kept her records, at least some of them, in this slim book.
You can see this ledger and all of our artifacts of note, Wed-Sun 11-4pm.
Source: "A History of the Neill-Cochran House," Kenneth C. HafertepeAcquisition
Accession
2010.01Source or Donor
Mrs. Everett Dayton Bohls (Mary Jewell Cochran)Acquisition Method
Gift