Mary:

All we have for the 18th-century Chesapeake are estimates of fertility based on samples of data from some counties, but the picture is still pretty clear. Maryland data used by Allan Kulikoff (Tobacco and Slaves, p.60) suggest that women born between 1650 and 1700 married on average at age 16.8 and had 9.4 children (if they lived all the way through their childbearing years), only 3.3 of whom survived to age 20; women born during the next 50 years (1700-1750), married at an older age (18.6), had fewer children in "completed families" (9.0), of whom 5.4 survived to age 20; finally, the next cohort of women married still later (age 22.2), had 6.9 children per completed family, of whom 3.7 survived to age 20. The figures you cite are in the "ball park"--i.e., not too different from those given by Kulikoff for women born between 1650 and 1750, though 12 children is on the high side.

Doug Deal 
History/SUNY Oswego

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