Here's a tentative response from a dilettante.

The title translates directly as "Big Debt Book."

The first word is spelled "grote" now but would have been "groote" in 1883, prior to a spelling reform. (The uninflected form is "groot," but nowadays adding the "e" is considered enough to maintain the "long o" sound, so the second "o" is dropped when inflected.)

The second word is now "schuld" but was probably "schuldt" then.

The second and third words would be written together now ("schuldboek"), but may have been hyphenated then. It seems unlikely that they would be written separately.

Note: If this is someone's personal ledger, then the spellings may have been idiosyncratic.

Best of luck,
Scott Monje


-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Sullivan [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2004 7:16 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Correct form of Dutch book


I'm in the process of putting _History of the Schenectady Patent_
(Jonathan Pearson, 1883) on our site and I'm trying to do some authority
control on the works cited.

The footnotes contain references to a book variously referred to as
_Groote Schult boek_, _Grote Schuldt-boek_ and possibly others.

I have hunted through the New York State Library's catalog and
tentatively concluded the first word should be Groote, but I'd
appreciate it if any scholars on the list could give me a lead on the
correct title.

Thanks in advance,

Bob Sullivan  <[log in to unmask]>
Schenectady County Public Library (NY)  <http://www.scpl.org/>
Schenectady Digital History Archive
<http://www.schenectadyhistory.org/>