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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