Tag: Tobacco

  • Put It in a Hogshead

    Put It in a Hogshead

    Jeremy M. Bell // AMH 4110.0M01 – Colonial America, 1607-1763

    If you had a hogshead, what would you do with it? Would you drink out of your hogshead? How about pack it full of tobacco to save for later? Would you pack it full of sugar maybe? Well, if you were living in colonial America you certainly might do any of the above.

    A hogshead is a unit of measurement used more commonly in colonial times than today. And why is that? The easy answer is that the average person today does very little with barrels. In colonial times, when you entered a store one of the first things to be noticed was the number of barrels  present. Barrels were the shipping containers of their time. For ease of transport, storage, and sealable freshness, barrels were the colonial Tupperware. So, what constitutes a hogshead, and where does the term come from?

    Barrels came in various sizes. A hogshead held approximately 1000 pounds of tobacco (or 64 gallons of liquid). Photo credit: Distillerytrail.com

    In 1423, the British Parliament passed the first act to standardize barrels and their measurements.[1] A tun was set at 252 gallons. Each designation of volume would then be cut in half. So, a pipe barrel would be measured as 126 gallons, or half of a tun. Following suit, a hogshead would measure in at 64 gallons and a standard barrel at 32 gallons.[2] There were exceptions to the halving rule, and more barrel sizes, but these were the main units of measure. Dry goods, such as tobacco, sugar, or salted fish, would be packed into the barrels until the net weight matched that of the same barrel full of water, to help standardize weight measurements.[3]

    The etymology of the term hogshead was clarified by Walter William Skeat of Cambridge in 1896. The term ‘hogshead’ was traditionally believed to be derived from hog’s hide, a possible material for containers to hold wine. Skeat argued that this simply wasn’t so. Tracing the term through the Dutch, Swedish, and Danish languages, Skeat argued that in all other languages, the first part of hogshead refers to an ox, not a hog. He concluded that hogshead was a corruption of the Swedish word oxhuvud meaning both the head of an ox and a barrel.[4]

    A depiction of hogshead barrels on a map of colonial Virginia from 1751. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Geography and Maps Division, LCCN 74693166.

    A hogshead barrel would have been a common sight in colonial American stores like that of eighteenth-century shopkeeper Alexander Henderson, factor for John Glassford, at the Colchester store in Virginia. John Glassford was one of the most prominent Scottish tobacco lords until his death in 1783.[5] The Glassford Company was the second highest shipper of hogsheads of tobacco to Great Britain in 1774  importing 4,506 hogsheads.[6]

    It was through the transcription of the 1760/1761 Colchester ledger that I first came across hogsheads. One of the ways in which customers could receive credit was through the selling of tobacco contained in a hogshead. Tobacco was the most common form of payment in the store.

    Joseph Power’s credit account at the Colchester store, where he paid his debt with hogsheads of tobacco (folio 059C).

    Abbreviated in the ledger as Hhd or Hhds, a hogshead is still used in the wine and whiskey markets mainly for maturing alcohol.[7] While less common today, this unit of measure and the container it refers to was an element of everyday life in colonial times. From the common mercantile store to large plantations, a hogshead barrel was an essential element of life before and after its standardization by the British Parliament in 1423.

     

    [1] United States, Department of State, “Report upon Weights and Measures,” John Quincy Adams, Senate 119 and House 109 of 16th Congress 2nd Session, Boston Public Library (Washington: Printed by Gales & Seaton, 1821), 27, https://archive.org/details/reportuponweights1821unit.

    [2] Department of State, “Report,” 27.

    [3] Ibid., 26.

    [4] William Walter Skeat, A Student’s Pastime: Being a Select Series of Articles Reprinted from “Notes and Queries” (London, England: Clarendon press, 1996), 33.

    [5] John Francis Hackett, John Glassford and Company Records: A Finding Aid to the Collection in the Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 2000), 4.

    [6] James H. Soltow, The Economic Role of Williamsburg (Williamsburg: University Press of Virginia, Charlottesvile, 1965), 47, Colonial Williamsburg Digital Library,
    http://research.history.org/DigitalLibrary/view/index.cfm?doc=ResearchReports\RR0066.xml&highlight=.

    [7] “Casks (barrels, hogsheads, butts),.” WhiskyInvestDirect, accessed April 20, 2017,
    https://www.whiskyinvestdirect.com/about-whisky/scotch-whisky-casks-and-barrels.

  • Growing Money

    Growing Money

    Brandon Plumlee // AMH 4110.0M01 – Colonial America, 1607-1763

    Nowadays, we say that money doesn’t grow on trees. In colonial Virginia it didn’t grow on trees either, but it did grow on gold-green shrubs. As can be seen in the Glassford and Henderson accounts, clients to the Colchester store (1760-1761) overwhelmingly used tobacco to purchase
    their goods and services, far more so than cash. In fact, it has been estimated that by the time of the American Revolution, a full two-thirds of the population of the Tidewater and Piedmont regions of Virginia grew tobacco, even after a move to grow more wheat.[1] The people of colonial Virginia, both in the Tidewater and Piedmont regions, were literally growing their own money. So pervasive was the use of tobacco as currency that one observer in 1740 stated that “they have not the least occasion for paper money.”[2]

    A depiction of the enslaved preparing a hogshead of tobacco. From The New York Public Library, UUID: fb320ec0-c600-012f-ed2b-58d385a7bc34.

    Today we pay for goods and services with cash, but don’t really pay any attention to how exactly that cash is minted or printed. So, how did they grow their money? First things first, it was a very labor intensive process requiring many workers, usually enslaved, at very specific times throughout the growing season. The first step was to germinate the plants in small seedbeds until the plants were big and strong enough to transplant into the fields. Before the tobacco plants could be planted, field hands had to build earthen mounds about a foot or two high and approximately three to four feet apart. This task was the most time consuming and labor intensive since the mounds often required being rebuilt several times throughout the season. After ensuring that the seedlings wouldn’t be choked by weeds, the growing plants would have to be “primed,” meaning the lowest hanging leaves were removed to improve overall tobacco quality. Tobacco had to be constantly monitored for pests and disease, as it is highly susceptible; field hands went out daily to check for tobacco worms.[3]

    Assuming the tobacco survived all of these growing challenges, the harvesting season usually occurred in late summer during the dog-days of August and September. The problem was that each individual plant would be ready at a different time, meaning hands had to go out to the fields many times and gather up all the plants ready for harvest. However, if they waited too long, an early frost might kill whatever plants were left in the field. After the plant was cut, it was taken to a barn or similar place and  hung up to be “cured.” In the very early days, the farmers would simply leave the tobacco on the ground and cover it with hay or straw, but they quickly learned that hanging the leaves was far more effective. The process of curing took about a month to complete, assuming that it was done properly and mold didn’t damage any of the tobacco. It was then “prized,” or put into large casks called hogsheads. A hogshead’s weight varied slightly but was officially 1000 pounds of tobacco.[4] It is at this point that the tobacco would have been inspected and a tobacco note issued. This note would have been given to Henderson, or one of his employees, for store credit.

    Benoni Halley’s credit account, which he used to pay his debts with four hogsheads of tobacco (folio 023C).

    These hogsheads of tobacco were what were used as currency in just about any store in the colonial Chesapeake region. The credit pages of Glassford and Henderson’s ledgers abound with information on the various weights of the hogsheads. For example, a customer of the Colchester store, Benoni Halley, paid the store a total of 4 hogsheads for purchases in the store – that’s roughly 2 tons of tobacco![5] Henderson gave him a little over £22 sterling worth of credit.[6] To put this into perspective, the annual income of American colonists was £15.6, which means that Mr. Halley would have been able to live quite comfortably off of his tobacco for that year.[7] With his credit, Mr. Halley was able to buy goods ranging from cloth to rum to gunpowder.[8] It is safe to say that people throughout the colonial Chesapeake were growing their own money.

    Benoni Halley used his four hogsheads of tobacco to purchase various goods, such as different fabrics, alcohol, and gunpowder, as well as items such as women’s shoes, combs, and bridles (folio 023D).

     

    [1] Drew A. Swanson, A Golden Weed: Tobacco and Environment in the Piedmont South (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 20.

    [2] William Keith, “A Discourse on the Medium of Commerce,” in Collection of Papers and Other Tracts, Written Ocasionally on Various Subjects: To Which Is Prefixed,
    by Way of Preface, an Essay on the Nature of a Publick Spirit     (London: Printed by and for J. Mechell, 1740), 209,
    http://galenet.galegroup.com.ezproxy.net.ucf.edu/servlet/Sabin?dd=0&locID=orla57816&d1-
    SABCP01767900&srchtp=b&c=19&df=f&d2=1&docNum=CY3802082052&b0=tobacco+planting&h2=1&vrsn=1.0&b
    1=0X&db=Title+Page&d6=1&ste=10&stp=DateAscend&d4=0.33&n=10&d5=d6.

    [3] “Tobacco: Colonial Cultivation Methods,” National Park Service Historic Jamestown, last modified unknown, accessed March 20, 2017, https://www.nps.gov/jame/learn/historyculture/tobacco-colonial-cultivation-methods.htm.

    [4] National Park Service, “Tobacco: Colonial Cultivation Methods.”

    [5] Alexander Henderson, et. al. Ledger 1760-1761, Colchester, Virginia folio 23 Credit, from the John Glassford and Company Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington D.C., Microfilm Reel 58 (owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association).

    [6] Henderson, et. al. Ledger 1760-1761 folio 23 Credit.

    [7] Peter H. Lindert and Jeffery G. Williamson, “American Colonial Incomes, 1650-1774,” Economic History Review 69, no. 1 (2014): 57.

    [8] Henderson, et. al. Ledger 1760-1761 folio 23 Debit.

  • Tobacco on the Occoquan: A Smooth Sailing Economy

    Tobacco on the Occoquan: A Smooth Sailing Economy

    Mercy Alexander // AMH4110.0M01 – Colonial America, 1607-1763

    Tobacco was the foundation of the Chesapeake’s economic prosperity throughout the eighteenth century. By the late 1780s, Virginia and Maryland were exporting some 80,000 hogsheads worth of tobacco yearly to Great Britain, the primary port of destination. In London, Chesapeake planters exchanged their produce for manufactured goods or consigned it for papered bills.[1]

    Tobacco was so valuable at that time that it was often used in place of currency. In Glassford and Henderson’s Colchester store ledger for 1760-1761, tobacco was both a commodity to be bought and a form of payment for purchasing material goods available at the store.

    Tobacco used as payment for the purchase of goods at the Glassford and Henderson Store, August 1761. Folio 59C

    However, despite its importance to the economy of Virginia, the plant proved to lend itself to an unstable market. The value of tobacco often fluctuated depending on the harvest yield, popular demand, and other unforeseen and uncontrollable variables. In 1727, oversaturation of the market and the decline in prices sunk the worth of tobacco so low that planters found it difficult to make a living from its production.[2] Virginia Governor William Gooch, hoping to relieve the colony’s economic woes, set into motion a series of laws which would come to be known as the Tobacco Inspection Act of 1730. The laws were designed to reduce the number of inferior grades of tobacco being sold to Britain, thereby preventing chronic overproduction and allowing for an increase in market price. The act called for the construction of several warehouses throughout the colony where planters would be required to send their tobacco for inspection prior to its exportation to Britain.[3]

    At Glassford and Henderson’s store in Colchester, any written record of the transaction of tobacco was generally accompanied by the name of the location of a warehouse. From the 1760-1761 store ledger, it appears much of the tobacco bought and sold within the store stemmed from a warehouse located along the Occoquan River.[4] While little other information regarding the warehouse is given within the ledger itself, it can be inferred that Glassford and Henderson’s customers likely exchanged most of their tobacco from here due to the warehouse’s relative proximity to the store.

    Map Showing the Distance Between the town of Colchester and the Occoquan Warehouse in 1760.
    “An Interoperative Historical Map of Fairfax County Virginia in 1760” – © Beth Mitchell – Published by Office of
    Comprehensive Planning, County of Fairfax, 1987.

    The first mention of a warehouse being built on the Occoquan comes in 1734 when authorities established one on land previously used as the site of a copper mine owned by a man named Carter.[5] The construction of the warehouse along the river and the creation of Prince William County in 1731 (south of the Occoquan River) led local landowners north of the Occoquan River to petition the Virginia Assembly for the founding of a new town and county. In 1742, the County of Fairfax was officially created, named in honor of Thomas, Sixth Lord of Fairfax, and composing some 399 square miles.[6] Eleven years later in 1753, The General Council laid the foundation of what would become Colchester, Virginia, when they called for the surveying of land “lying and being on Occoquan river in the county of Fairfax…beginning on the upper side of the ferry landing, and extending down the said river…”[7] Located near the bustling north bank of the Occoquan River, Colchester became a prominent tobacco port town and the site for Glassford and Henderson’s store.

    Map showing the property owned by Benjamin Grayson where the new warehouse would be built.
    “An Interoperative Historical Map of Fairfax County Virginia in 1760” – © Beth Mitchell – Published by Office of
    Comprehensive Planning, County of Fairfax, 1987.

    In 1762, further legislation passed by the Virginia General Assembly had the Occoquan warehouse discontinued, citing the “ruinous” conditions of the building and its inconvenient location so far removed from the county’s main port of trade—Colchester. The new warehouse was to be established in the town Colchester on the property of a local resident, Benjamin Grayson, where it would remain until the end of the Revolutionary War.[8]

    The Occoquan River warehouse was just one of many such buildings erected throughout Virginia on the south side of the Potomac River and its tributaries. These public warehouses were overseen by inspectors, generally themselves planters, who were appointed yearly by the justices of Virginia’s county courts.[9] With two inspectors assigned to every one warehouse, these men were charged with assuring the quality of the tobacco being sold within the market.[10] Planters whose tobacco passed inspection were given crop notes or transfer notes which could be exchanged for goods.[11] These notes were used as a form of money and created a system of exchange based upon the value of tobacco.[12] Any tobacco that failed to pass the inspector’s judgment was burned.[13]

    Example of a transfer tobacco Note, 1777. Courtesy of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

    At Glassford and Henderson’s Colchester, Virginia, one sees numerous credit accounts in which customers purchased their goods either through the use of notes or, more commonly, via transactions of hogsheads full of tobacco. The overwhelming majority of these containers had their origins listed as being from “on the Occoquan” likely in reference to the warehouses where the crop had been inspected.

    Tobacco was at the heart of the Virginia economy, and in that sense, it was the lifeblood of the Glassford and Henderson store. The passing of the Tobacco Inspection Act of 1730 led to an explosion in the productivity and value of the tobacco trade. The subsequent establishment of the Occoquan Warehouse and the tobacco ports culminated in the founding of both Fairfax County and the important trading town of Colchester, Virginia. Tobacco allowed Virginians a means of purchasing British manufactured goods, exchanging bills, notes, and hogsheads as an alternative form of currency which could be used to buy nails, linen, glass, china, rum, salt, and other popular or necessary commodities from local shops like the Colchester store.

     

    [1] “Description of Virginia Commerce,” The William and Mary Quarterly 4, no. 2 (Oct. 1906): 88.

    [2] Stacy L. Lorenz, “To Do Justice to His Majesty, the Merchant and the Planter: Governor William Gooch and the
    Virginia Tobacco Inspection Act of 1730,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 108, no. 4 (2000): 345.

    [3] Lorenz, “To Do Justice to His Majesty, the Merchant and the Planter,” 363.

    [4] “Description of Virginia Commerce,” 90.

    [5] Earnie Porta, Images of America: Occoquan (Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2010), 8.

    [6] Office of the Sherriff, Fairfax County, Virginia: 1742-2001 (Nashville, Tennessee: Turner Publishing Company,
    2002), 16.

    [7] William Waller Hening, The Statutes at Large: Being a Collection of all Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of
    Legislature, in the Year 1619     (Richmond, Virginia: Franklin Press – W.W Gray, Prints, 1819), Vol. 6, Ch. XXII, 396, accessed May 2, 2018, http://vagenweb.org/hening/vol06-18.htm.

    [8] Hening, The Statutes at Large, Vol. 7, Ch. II, 530-531, http://vagenweb.org/hening/vol07-24.htm.

    [9] Ibid., Vol. 4, Ch. III, 247-271, http://vagenweb.org/hening/vol04-13.htm.

    [10] “Description of Virginia Commerce,” 90.

    [11] John C. Rainbolt, “The Case of the Poor Planters in Virginia under the Law for Inspecting and Burning Tobacco,”
    The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 79, no. 3 (July 1971): 315.

    [12] Lorenz, “To Do Justice to His Majesty, the Merchant and the Planter,” 376.

    [13] Rainbolt, “The Case of the Poor Planters in Virginia,” 315.

  • Tobacco: The Most Versatile Cash Crop

    Tobacco: The Most Versatile Cash Crop

    Joseph Swiderski // AMH 4110.0M01—Colonial America, 1607-1763

    In colonial America, tobacco was one of the most influential crops in cultivation. Colonies like Virginia profited heavily from its agricultural success. The successful cultivation of tobacco began when John Rolfe planted South American tobacco seeds called Nicotiana tobacum in 1612. From there, “tobacco production spread from the Tidewater area to the Blue Ridge Mountains, especially dominating the agriculture of the Chesapeake region.”[1] It became such a huge commodity that the Virginia House of Burgesses made it a requirement for tobacco to be inspected, and directed the construction of warehouses and port towns where tobacco would be brought by planters.[2] As tobacco became more valuable, its uses expanded from smoking to use as currency. It was used for just about anything: purchasing indentured servants and slaves to cultivate the crop, paying taxes, or purchasing manufactured goods and items from the local store.[3]

    Tobacco plants hung to dry. Image courtesy of VirginiaPlaces.org under CC3.0.

    What really caught my attention was something much more interesting than the tobacco itself. While transcribing ledgers from the Colchester store accounts (1760-1761) of John Glassford and Alexander Henderson, I noticed that not all of the people paying their accounts were doing so with their own tobacco, but tobacco from other people. This intrigued me because obviously people that grew tobacco could use it as currency, but how did a random man use someone else’s tobacco as a form of currency to pay their account? The answer was that tobacco itself became a source of social currency as well as money. It became a way of paying off your accounts and a way of paying others, who then purchased items at the store using someone else’s tobacco as payment.

    A payment by Daniel Laughlin to his account at the Colchester store (1760-1761) using a crop note from Joseph Stephens (folio 045C).

    The picture above is an example of account credits from the Colchester store (1760-1761) of Glassford and Henderson. This account belonged to a man named Daniel Laughlin. On  July 31, 1761, Laughlin credited a crop note for 1 hogshead (a barrel) of tobacco from the Pohick warehouse to pay for his account.[4] He used tobacco as payment so that he could purchase items from the store. What I found interesting was the interesting mark indicating the tobacco’s “ownership” or tobacco mark: a capitalized I, a superscripted S, and a capitalized A. It reads ISA, which was a tobacco mark that represented not Daniel Laughlin but Joseph Stephens. Tobacco marks most frequently matched the initials of the owner (in this case it would be DL which was identified as Laughlin’s mark in 1759).[5] This ledger shows that Daniel Laughlin credited the Colchester store 1 hogshead of Joseph Stephens’ tobacco; in September, 1761, Stephens paid his account with an additional hogshead of tobacco.[6]

    A 1751 map cartouche depicting the inspection and shipping of tobacco hogsheads. From the Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, LCCN 74693166.

    I found no immediate relationship between these men in the ledger other than that Laughlin used Stephens’ tobacco to buy goods that he needed. As a local landowner, Stephens may have hired Laughlin for some service and paid him in tobacco. Regardless, Laughlin profited by nine pounds, 19 shillings on the transaction enabling him to purchase many different fabrics from the Colchester store: cotton, bearskin, osnaburg, roles, linen, striped Holland, German serge, shalloon, sheeting, ferrit, check, and buckram.[7]

    Purchases made by Daniel Laughlin at the Colchester store from 1760-1761 (folio 045D).

    Through my research I learned a lot about what eighteenth century life was like. Tobacco opened up a new world of possibilities for American colonists, and it widened the range of its uses as time passed. People not only used their own tobacco as currency, but they used that of others as well. They exchanged tobacco for goods or paid other people with the crop, who then used it as currency in the local economy for whatever they needed. Although I do not know the specific relationship between these two men, they were  connected through tobacco. Tobacco brought them together in a way that was beyond currency. It went from being a cash crop to a social crop. It brought individuals, families,  and communities together. In my opinion, tobacco was not only the most valuable crop monetarily, but also culturally. Tobacco became its own culture and that is what had an effect on me while doing my research. I was inspired by how this leafy green and relatively ugly looking plant took over the colonial economy and also impacted people’s lives.

    Growing tobacco plants. Image under CC0.

     

    [1] Emily Jones Salmon and John Salmon, “Tobacco in Colonial Virginia,” Encyclopedia Virginia, accessed March 23, 2017, https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Tobacco_in_Colonial_Virginia.

    [2] William Waller Hening, ed., The Statues at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia from the First Session of the Legislature in the Year 1619 (Richmond: Franklin Press, 1820), Vol. 4, Ch. III, 247-271, accessed May 21, 2018,
    http://vagenweb.org/hening/vol04-13.htm.

    [3] Salmon and Salmon, “Tobacco in Colonial Virginia.”

    [4] Alexander Henderson, et. al. Ledger 1760-1761, Colchester, Virginia folio 45 Credit, from the John Glassford and Company Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Microfilm Reel 58 (owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association).

    [5] Beth Anderson Mitchell, “Colonial Virginia Business Records as a Genealogical Resource,” National Genealogical Society Quarterly 62, no. 4 (December 1974): 261.

    [6] Henderson, et. al. Ledger 1760-1761, folio 88 Credit.

    [7] Ibid., folio 45 Debit.