In 1723, the Virginia General Assembly passed "An Act for the better and
more Effectual Improving the Staple of Tobacco." Its goal was to prevent
overproduction and consequent price declines. The loose court records of
Essex County, deposited in the Library of Virginia contain a list of 56
tobacco planters in 1726, together with the number of their tithables and
the number of plants. The smallest number was 1,132 plants for Samuel
Bizwell who listed only himself as a tithable, and the largest was John
Miller who listed 6 tithes and 2 boys between 10 and 16 years old, and a
planting of 42,000. The rest fall between these two extremes, and most of
them appear to be multiples of 10,000 per tithable or sometimes less. (This
list has been transcribed and will be published in a forthcoming issue of
_The Virginia Genealogist_ sometime in 2002.) Tobacco was notoriously a
labor-intensive crop, and there is a good reason that one still hears the
expression "working like a slave." John Hopewell, archivist in local
records, LVA
-----Original Message-----
From: J. Douglas Deal [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, December 14, 2001 8:51 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Output of GW's slaves
Henry:
These figures are not outlandish. If I recall correctly, during the 1720s
when Virginia was trying to regulate tobacco production by, among other
things, allowing each laborer to tend only a certain number of plants and
no more, the figure allowed per tithable was 10,000. The Northampton
County loose court records in Eastville contain several "counts" of
tobacco plants on each farm by local tobacco inspectors in the late 1720s.
For the best data on actual output (tobacco, corn, wheat) in the
Chesapeake in the 18th century, look at Lorena Walsh's essay in Ira Berlin
and Philip Morgan, eds., Cultivation and Culture: Labor and the Shaping of
Slave Life in the Americas (1993).
Douglas Deal
Professor of History and Director of General Education
State University of New York at Oswego
Oswego, NY 13126
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