SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (CAPITOL CITY NOW) – Oh, the things you can pick up at auction for two bucks.

A Petersburg family has donated to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum a ledger from a local dry-goods store documenting sales for thirteen months in 1836-37. A young lawyer and lawmaker named Abraham Lincoln was a frequent customer, buying, among other things, clothing materials — buttons, fabric, and thread – to likely either make a suit or repair an existing one.

“Lincoln understood that with so much change on the horizon, he needed to shed the image of the rough-and-tumble frontiersman and adopt a more formal personage,” said Ian Hunt, the ALPLM’s head of acquisitions. “It’s likely that Lincoln’s decision to augment his wardrobe came both from seeing how his colleagues in the General Assembly dressed, but also preparing for a future in courtrooms, now that he was a licensed attorney.”

The late Raymond Montgomery purchased a box of books at auction in the 1970’s. His family has donated the ledger from Bennett’s store to the ALPLM, which will display it in the presidential library from Nov. 19 through the end of the year.

Again, Montgomery’s winning bid for the books that included the old ledger? Two dollars.