A Portrait of York County Middling Families

A Portrait of York County Middling Planters and Their Slaves, 1760-1775

by Kevin Kelly

Many eighteenth-century Virginians, as well as colonial Americans generally, liked to divide society into three groups. For example, during the ratifying debate on the Constitution, Patrick Henry spoke of the “well born,” “middle,” and “lower” ranks. Historian Jackson Turner Main notes that characteristics such as “respectable,” “honest,” and “sober” were applied to the “middle sort,” but, Main argues, access to property and wealth was key to “class” distinctions. ¹

A middling planter, then, was a man with some property. But how much? The sources Main cites are vague about where to draw the dividing line. But, for our purposes, we need to make the effort to do so. Tax lists exist for three tidewater counties, Essex, James City, and Gloucester, in the 1760s and 1770s. These lists enumerate both tithable household size and quitrent acreage. In each of these counties, just a handful of household heads, approximately 5 percent, commanded large households of sixteen or more tithables and nine hundred-plus acres. (Note that each county varies from the others; Gloucester has the highest threshold for the largest planter, Essex the lowest.) The percentage of men with little or no taxable property, defined as households with one or two tithes and no land or fewer than one hundred acres, varies in the three counties, averaging from 28 percent of households in James City to 42 percent in Gloucester.

In all three counties, another groups of planters owned one to four tithables and more than one hundred acres but (usually) less than five hundred acres. These householders could be part of the so-called “middling sort,” but they could just as readily be counted as small planters or even members of the “lesser” sort.

There is yet another cluster in the tax lists that seems to fall between these small planters and the truly large ones. Amounting to a sizeable number of household in Essex (14 percent), Gloucester (20 percent), and James City (22 percent) Counties, this group paid taxes on four to ten tithes and 150 to 799 acres. ² Perhaps these were the middling planters described by James Parker in September 1774. Parker wrote Charles Steuart about the state of politics in Virginia, reporting that, in the end, the “country people” will “be for Old King George, he is the man they must depend upon.” For Parker these “country people” were “the honest 6 hhd [hogshead] planters downwards.” Given the typical yield per hand and the average weight of a hogshead in the late colonial period, it would have taken the labor of around eight adult tithables to produce enough to fill six hogsheads.³

Keeping these numbers in mind, we now turn to the documents that let us explore who the middling planters of York County were: probate estate inventories recorded between 1760 and 1775. Inventories are fraught with problems. They probably are not representative of the living population, and they may not even be representative of the decedent population. Moreover, estate appraisers may have overlooked or miscounted items. Still, if used with care, inventories provide valuable data.

Nearly two hundred inventories were recorded in the York County court between 1760 and 1775. Slaves were counted as property in 64 percent of them. Ten slaves were the mean average owned by slave-owning decedents. The median average stood higher at eighteen slaves owned. Among the slave-owning decedents, 50 percent owned six or fewer; 13 percent of the estates held twenty or more slaves.⁴

Because the key interpretative goal at the Great Hopes site is to help our guests better understand the lives of African Americans in rural Virginia, it is important that we represent a plantation large enough that the full range of their lives—marriages and childrearing practices, for example—can be represented. Given that goal and the profile of the middling planter suggested by the tax lists, I have selected twenty-five inventories of rural decedents whose estate included at least seven but no more than sixteen slaves. (Seven of these inventories enumerate the property of widows, but because our focus is as much on plantation slaves as it is on slave owners, I kept them in my sample.)

Two hundred sixty-six slaves were appraised on these inventories. The mean and median average of the number of slaves held was 10. Naturally, given the higher number of slaves on the largest estates, almost a quarter of the 266 slaves lived on plantations with 16 slaves, while only 8 percent were in households with 7 slaves. The demographic characteristics of these 266 slaves are fairly interesting. In Bruton Parish, women (adult and children) outnumbered men (adult and children) in a ratio of 10 to 8. In Yorkhampton Parish, the sex ratio was even more unbalanced with a ratio of 7.4 men to 10 women. Only in Charles Parish were the sexes evenly split. For the county overall, there were 8.3 men for every 10 women. On the average plantation of 10 slaves, 4.5 were men and 5.5 were women. That 0.5 makes for an interesting interpretive challenge!

Another interesting feature about the slave population seen in these inventories is the relatively small number of children. For example in Bruton Parish, only eleven of the ninety-six slaves (11.5 percent) whose age group (“man,” “male,” “fellow,” “boy,” “woman,” “wench,” “girl,” and “child”) is identified were children. The percentage of children in the slave population in the other two counties is higher (40.5 percent in Yorkhampton and 45 percent in Charles Parish). Even if one eliminates the Bruton Parish estates altogether and includes only those inventories that list a slave’s age group, the number of identified children accounts for only 42 percent of the total. If these numbers are accurate, we are left with a puzzle. Why is the York County slave population, as represented in the inventories, not showing the potential for natural increase (more children than adults) that characterized slaves elsewhere in the colony?

Perhaps it is all a matter of definition. York County appraisers may have included young teenage boys and girls in their definition of men and women. Yet, elsewhere, Virginians do distinguish between tithables twelve to fifteen and those over sixteen; younger slaves were considered to be less productive. Furthermore, this low percentage of children to the total slave population is not simply a characteristic of the middling planter’s estate. An examination of the inventories of York County decedents with more than twenty slaves (eliminating urban decedents and the truly strange 1773 inventory of Robert Shield with its count of forty-four adult slaves and only five children) reveals only 40 percent of their slaves listed as children. Perhaps, again, the missing children were young teenagers. If so, perhaps these young people were also the most marketable.

The inventories of small planters also describe only 42 percent of their slaves as children. If young teenaged slaves from middling plantations were sold to small planters, the number of children counted in small planters’ holdings ought to be higher. One obvious and ominous conclusion is possible: young slaves of middling planters may not have been sold to nearby planters but out of the county. On the other hand, it could be that the adults inventories were indeed purchased by small planters from neighbors in an effort to accumulate slaves more quickly rather than rely on natural increase alone. More research will be needed to see if this is a possibility. Meanwhile, the missing children are a mystery.

The names of slaves on these middling planters’ estates seem to parallel what is known about black naming patterns. Christian names familiar to white Virginians are common. Will, Jack, John, George, Tom, and Ben are frequent male names. Biblical names such as Adam (twice), Isham, Gabriel, and Aaron can be found. One does wonder who named a slave Cain! On rare occasion, classical or place name identifies a male slave. Only two names, Taph and Deco, may have a foreign origin. Christian and English names were commonly given to women. Betty, Bess, Lucy, Peggy, and Margaret are found. Women received biblical names more often than men. Dinah, Hannah, Sarah, Judith, Mary, Moll, Rachel, Esther, and Beck are some examples. Women occasionally received classical names; for example, Venus.

On eight of the twenty-five inventories, there are twelve name pairings. Two adult men with the same name and two adult women bearing the same name lived on the same plantations. Two girls bore the name of another woman on the plantation while six boys lived on a plantation where an adult male answered to the same name. The other eight pairings each involve an adult and a child. The name Toney appears only as a pair. It would be nice to say that these pairings, especially adult male and boy pairings, indicate possible family connections. No other Toney can be found in the inventories (although an Anthony is listed in one).

Lorena Walsh’s study of the Burwell family’s slaves shows that sons were occasionally named for fathers, but daughters were seldom named for mothers. That only six of the thirty-one boys named in these inventories paired up with an adult male in the same inventory seems to confirm Walsh’s conclusion that children were not commonly named for parents. In other words, name pairings are not necessarily evidence of a parent-child relationship, while at the same time the absence of such pairings does not preclude the possibility that a number of parents and their children lived together on those plantations. ⁵

The middling planters and widows were people of some property. But that “some” property was essentially the value of their slaves. The appraised value of their total personal estates ranged from £229:19:11 to £803:13:8. The percentages of those evaluations invested in slaves ranged from 52 percent to 92 percent. Thus, on average, slaves accounted for 75 percent of middling planters’ appraised wealth. Granted, the value of their real property would have reduced the role slaves played in making these middling planters wealthy men and women. But it would not eliminate it. Slaves made the middling planters wealthier than their neighboring small planters. (The lack of land tax records for colonial York County hinders any easy effort to recover evidence of their landholdings. A search through land patents, deeds, and wills may make it possible to recover some information about land ownership, but that is beyond the scope of this article.)

These middling planters were the workhorses of county government. By their appointment to such positions as petit and grand jurors, constables, and surveyors of the highway, they helped ensure the execution of justice and upheld the administrative structure of the county. This is not to say the court did not appoint smaller planters to these posts (a close study of the social background of all such appointed officers is warranted); rather that these middling planters regularly held these offices as had many of their fathers, even grandfathers. It is possible to determine office-holding for eighteen of the decedents, or the husbands of the female decedents. The offices were petit and grand jurors, constable, surveyor of the highway, tobacco inspector, churchwarden, undersheriff, militia officer, and estate appraiser. Of the eighteen men, only one held no office. The seventeen officeholders combined to hold sixty appointed offices, or on average 3.5 each. ⁶

The most frequent appointment for middling planters was as estate appraiser. In such a position, one would need a solid knowledge of the market value of a great assortment of household items, as well as of slaves, livestock, and crops. That the appraiser fairly valued these goods helped ensure the stability of the credit-debit network upon which the economy depended.

The second most frequently held office was petit juror. A petit juror was his neighbor’s peer. His honest efforts to determine the facts in civil suits were essential to a credible system of justice.

Constables were agents of law enforcement. Lacking force to carry out his power, a constable had to depend on the goodwill gained by a fair exercise of his duties. A surveyor of the highway was required to regularly call out his neighbors or their slaves to keep the roads open. To ensure attendance, constables needed to recognize that any such requests were always a burden on the average planter and had to make what efforts he could to minimize the disruption.

Tobacco inspectors had the power to make or break the work of a small planter’s whole year. His decision to burn a sizable portion of proffered tobacco as trash and seconds could reduce a small planter’s income by one-third to one-half. Any hint of favoritism would jeopardize a system on which planters, large and small, depended.

The middling planter had to balance the demands of these official duties with the demands of managing his plantation. We await Lorena Walsh’s forthcoming work for a full study of plantation management, but some idea can be gained by a look at planters’ inventories. Among the crops grown, tobacco still seemed to be of some importance. Sixty-four percent of the inventories mentioned hoes. Three estates had tobacco on hand when it was appraised; the largest amount owned was 2,964 pounds, held by John Wynne. Corn was also grown on at least 52 percent of the plantations. The amount inventoried ranged from a low of three barrels to a high of ninety barrels.

Harvested wheat was found on 40 percent of the estates inventoried. Forty-eight percent of the inventories included tools (plows, reaphook, etc.) useful for growing wheat. Three other inventories, which did not include harvested wheat or wheat-related tools, did have draught steers or oxen. If you combine inventories that include one of these three components, then 84 percent of the inventories evidence some wheat production capability.

Cotton production may have taken on some importance as well. Parcels of cotton, spun cotton, spinning cotton, and picked cotton are mentioned in fourteen inventories (56 percent) with the largest amount being the 238 pounds owned by John Shields of Charles Parish. On the other hand, some of this cotton may have been purchased. Finally, nine inventories, or 36 percent, record sizeable amounts of fodder on hand.

Livestock played an important role as well. Appraisers found cattle grazing on 88 percent of the middling planters’ estates. Herd sizes ranged from a low of six to a high of fifty-two cattle. The average herd size was approximately eighteen head. Butchering cows for beef does not seem to have been important. Only one inventory itemizes beef, which amounted to only twenty-five pounds. On the other hand, leather may have been an important by-product of cattle herding. Rawhides and sides of leather could be found on 43 percent of the estate inventories.

Swine can be found on 92 percent of the inventories. Robert Crawley had the largest number of pigs and shoats with 55; the countywide average was 17.5 hogs. Presumably, people kept hogs primarily for the production of meat products either for home consumption or sale, though only seven inventories (28 percent) mention pork products, some in sizeable amounts: 564 pounds of pork and 330 pounds, 301 pounds, 210 pounds, and 200 pounds of bacon. Sheep and goats were also kept by the middling planter; they could be found on 40 percent of plantations. Again, like cows, there is little evidence that sheep were primarily kept for their food value; rather they were valued for their wool. (For example, Francis Mennis had on hand 196 pounds of washed wool when he died. He also owned thirty sheep.)

Domestic manufacture of textiles (woolen and otherwise) may have supplemented a middling planter’s income. Eighty percent of the planters owned spinning wheels. Eight of ten sheep owners owned spinning wheels. A parcel of flax, a flax brake, and a flax wheel appear in a few inventories. Although 80 percent of middling planters could spin thread, only 24 percent with their itemized looms could turn thread into cloth. The cloth was, most likely, for home use or for sale to neighbors.

Surprisingly, appraisers found horses on only seventeen of the twenty-five (60 percent) estates inventoried. Even if you eliminate widows without horses, only 80 percent of the appraised estates included horses. It would seem some middling planters accomplished their civic duties on foot. The number of horses owned ranged from one to four. Even so, nine (36 percent) of these middling planters indulged in a bow toward gentility when they hitched up one of their horses to that expensive luxury—a riding chair!

One final note, the inventories of Bruton Parish decedents are less detailed than those from Yorkhampton Parish and Charles Parish. For example, on many Bruton Parish inventories, the appraisers were satisfied to just list the number of cows or cattle present. No Bruton Parish appraisal mentions any fowl. It is hard to believe none was present. However, a composite portrait based on all inventories from the three parishes will provide a richly detailed picture. The information gained in the process can well support a historically based interpretive program at the Great Hopes site.

Endnotes

¹Jackson Turner Main, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965), 232.

²John S. Hopewell, ed., “Two Tithable Lists from Essex County, ca. 1764-1765,” Tidewater Virginia Families: A Magazine of History and Genealogy 10(2001):163-177; Robert F. Woodson and Isobel B. Woodson, comps., Virginia Tithables from Burned Record Counties (Greenville, S.C.: Southern Historical Press, 1999); and Williamsburg-James City County, Va., Tax Books 1768-69, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (CWF Microfilm M-1129).

³James Parker to Charles Steuart, 26 Sept. 1774, Charles Steuart Papers, MS 5028, 1773-1774 (CWF microfilm M-68.3); Paul G.E. Clemens, The Atlantic Economy and Colonial Maryland’s Eastern Shore: From Tobacco to Grain (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1980), 171; and Lorena S. Walsh, From Calabar to Carter’s Grove: The History of a Virginia Slave Community (Charlottesville, Va.: University Press of Virginia, 1997), 119.

⁴Transcripts of York County Inventories, York County Project, Department of Historical Research, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

⁵Walsh, 160-169.

⁶Information about a planter’s office holdingis taken from the Master Biographical File in the York County Project housed in the Department of Historical Research, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Kevin Kelly is a historian in the Department of Historical Research. This paper was published in the Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter, Volume 24, No. 2 (2003).