I may be wrong, but I believe that most, if not all inventories were of the deceased personal estate only--real estate was a separate issue and different rules of inheritance applied.

Anne

-----Original Message-----
>From: Sunshine49 <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Apr 29, 2008 8:48 AM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] question about money
>
>Thanks, and what you say would also be interesting, but I'm just  
>comparing out of curiosity, and to get a general idea. Even within  
>the same time frame you can get an idea of wealth, one man's estate  
>was worth $53,525.24, while another's was worth $6,891.56 [he had  
>been a plasterer, died elderly for the time, and widowed, but during  
>his life he had bought and sold quite a lot of land]. Yes, I did  
>notice bedding seemed relatively valuable within the context of an  
>estate, while kitchen tools were very cheap, cheaper than the  
>woodworking tools many had. Horses were worth much more than cattle  
>[and the wealthier had cattle, the middling to poorer people had only  
>"hogges", everybody seemed to have "hogges"]. No one seemed to have a  
>lot of cattle, usually a cow, a heifer or two, maybe a team of oxen  
>or a bull. No "herds" like you see today out in the country. They  
>never seemed to list fowl and poultry in inventories, I am assuming  
>most people had at least a few chickens scratching around the yard.  
>I've only found one instance in my small sample, with sheep [11].  
>Land prices went up and down rather dramatically. 15 1/2 acres in  
>Amelia County in 1806 was sold for a mere $2,290.92. Maybe the  
>economy was still on poor footing from the Revolutionary War. The  
>$53,525 estate mentioned above was from a few years earlier. In that  
>estate, unfortunately, there were 5 slaves, 4 women and one young  
>adult male, whose worth was $9,355.66. Why was land and the house,  
>barn and other buildings never listed on these inventories, I wonder?
>
>Nancy
>
>-------
>I was never lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.
>
>--Daniel Boone
>
>
>
>On Apr 29, 2008, at 7:08 AM, Martha Katz-Hyman wrote:
>
>> Rather than spend time figuring out what something costs in today's  
>> dollars,
>> it might be more helpful to figure out what something cost as a  
>> percentage
>> of average yearly income.  For instance, in the last quarter of the  
>> 18th
>> century,  a journeyman tradesperson in Williamsburg, received, on  
>> average,
>> somewhere around 30 pounds/year.
>>
>> So if a bed and its furniture (mattress, hangings, pillows, etc.)  
>> was valued
>> at 10 pounds in a probate inventory of that period, and the  
>> inventory total
>> was about 100 pounds (not unusual), you could make the reasonable  
>> conclusion
>> that this was a pretty substantial investment, especially for a  
>> person of
>> middling income.
>>
>> There are, of course, exceptions and caveats to this example.  But  
>> given the
>> difficulty of translating prices across two-plus centuries, and the
>> difficulty of comparing prices for things that were very valuable two
>> centuries ago and do not have the same value to us, it may be more  
>> useful to
>> use the comparative method described above rather than try to compare
>> pound-to-dollar values.
>>
>> I know Harold Gill can explain this better than I, and welcome his  
>> comments!
>>
>> Martha Katz-Hyman
>>
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