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Economic Base and Social Structure: The Northern Chesapeake in the Eighteenth Century*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Aubrey C. Land
Aubrey C. Land
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
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Extract

The Maryland Gazette for 18 October 1749 carried an obituary of more than common interest:

On the Eleventh Instant Died, at his Seat on Wye River in Queen Anne's County, Richard Bennett, Esq. in the Eighty-third Year of his Age, generally lamented by all that knew him. As his great fortune enabled him to do much good, so (happily for many) his Inclination was equal to his Ability, to relieve the indigent and distressed, which he did very liberally, without regarding of what Party, Religion or Country, they were. As he was the greatest Trader in this Province, so great Numbers fell in his Debt, and a more merciful Creditor could not be, having never deprived the Widows or Orphans of his Debtors of a Support; and when what the Debtors left, was not sufficient for that purpose, frequently supply'd the deficiency. His long Experience and great Knowledge in Business, as well as his known Candor and generosity, occasion'd many to apply to him for Advice and Assistance, and none were ever disappointed of what was in his Power, and several by his means, extricated out of great Difficulties ….

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , December 1965 , pp. 639 - 654
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1965

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References

1 Maryland Gazette, October 18 and November 8, 1749.

2 Wright, Louis B., The Cultural Life of the American Colonies, 1607–1763 (New York: Harper, 1957), pp. 1–22Google Scholar.

3 Women who had property in their own right were also included. Mainly widows and spinsters, they formed a tiny fraction of the total.

4 Detailed reference notes to source materials will not be given in this paper. The author expects to publish a monograph reporting fully on this research in 1966. The folio volumes of the Inventories and Accounts, from which the statistical material was taken, are in the Maryland Hall of Records, Annapolis. After Volume 39A, this series is divided, one for Inventories and another for Accounts.

5 Ten shillings per hundred appears in the inventories rather frequently during this decade as a formula for transforming tobacco into sterling value. It is not therefore completely arbitrary. No dependable tobacco-price series has yet appeared.

6 Students of Chesapeake history are indebted to the pioneer work of Thomas J. Wertenbaker for the note of realism he brought to discussion of economic and social classes in The Planters of Colonial Virginia (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1922)Google Scholar.

7 Pares, Richard, “Merchants and Planters,” Economic History Review, Supplements, No. 4 (1960), p. 4Google Scholar.

8 The single exception was the estate of Edward Pye of St. Mary's County, appraised at £ 1150 13s. 6d. He had 42 slaves and 2 indentured servants (twice as many as the next largest slave holder) valued at £ 783, or 67 per cent of his total estate (Inventories and Accounts, Vol. XV, folios 131–133).

9 Again with the exception of Pye.

10 Mackintosh, W. A., “Some Aspects of a Pioneer Economy,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, II, No. 4 (Nov. 1936), 457–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 To be sure, some planters had been caught in the toils of debt both to English merchants and to provincial capitalists. They were exposed to such disadvantages and liabilities when indebted to English houses that their efforts to extricate themselves were often almost frantic. But there were also many, as the inventories show, who had sterling balances with one or more English houses.

12 Price, Jacob M., “The Economic Growth of the Chesapeake and the European Market, 1697–1775,” Journal ofEconomicHistory, XXIV (1964), 496–511Google Scholar, reports on impressive research that relates the growth of the Chesapeake to market structure. His analysis explains otherwise puzzling local variations within the Chesapeake, particularly in the last four decades of colonial dependency.