archaeology and probate inventories in the study of 18th century life (john bedell)30sep

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Archaeology and Probate Inventories in the Study of Eighteenth-Century LifeAuthor(s): John BedellSource: The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Autumn, 2000), pp. 223-245Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/207143 .

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Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xxxI:2 (Autumn, 2000), 223-245.

John BedellArchaeology and Probate Inventories in theStudy of Eighteenth-Century Life Historians have usedmany kinds of records to study the material world of the seven-teenth and eighteenth centuries, including paintings, letters, dia-ries, and wills. In recent years, however, they have concentratedon probate inventories-lists of people's possessions compiled justafter their death. Probate inventories were first taken for estateand tax purposes in many partsof Europe during the later MiddleAges, and later in colonial America. Sometimes these lists aredetailed, itemizing chairs, pots, pigs, and even bags. They providea window into the homes of people who lived and died long ago.Among the issues that historians have used inventories to studyare standards of living, overall wealth, self-sufficiency, economicdiversification, the transition from frontier to settled community,and, through the presence of clocks, the spread of our modern,regimented way of using time. Comparisons have been madeacross class lines, between England and Maryland, and betweenrural areas and towns.1Historians have discussed at some length the possible prob-lems with the age bias and wealth bias of samples, but the con-John Bedell is Archaeologist, The Louis Berger Group, Washington, D.C. He is the authorof "Memory and Proof of Age in England, 1272-1327," Past & Present,162 (I999), 3-27.The author wishes to thank the many people whose assistance made this researchpossible, including Kevin Cunningham, Ingred Wuebber, Meta Janowitz, Marie-LorrainePipes, Gerard Scharfenberger,Eric Griffiths, Robert Jacoby, Doug Tilley, Rick Vernay,Charles LeeDecker, and the Delaware Department of Transportation.? 2000 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the editors of The Journal ofInterdisciplinaryistory.I Lois Green Carr and Lorena S. Walsh. "The Standard of Living in the ColonialChesapeake," William& Mary Quarterly,XLV (i988), 135-159; idem, "Changing Lifestylesand Consumer Behavior in the Colonial Chesapeake,"in Cary Carson, Robert Hoffman,and Peter Albright (eds.), Of Consuming nterests:The Style of Life in the EighteenthCentury(Charlottesville, I994), 59-I66; Alice Hanson Jones, Wealthof a Nation to Be: The AmericanColonieson the Eveof the Revolution New York, I980); Gloria Main, "The Standardof Livingin Southern New England, 1640-1773," William& 24ary Quarterly,XLV (I988), 124-134;Carole Shammas, The Pre-industrial onsumnern EnglandandAmerica Oxford, 1990); Ad vander Woude and Anton Schuurman (eds.), Probate nventories: New Sourceor the HistoricalStudy of Wealth, MaterialCulture, and AgriculturalDevelopment Wageningen, I980); LornaWeatherill, ConsumerBehaviorand MlaterialCulture n Britain,1660-1760 (New York, I988);James P. P. Horn, "Adaptingto a New World: A Comparative Study of Local Society in

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224 | JOHN BEDELLsensus seems to be that such documents are accurate. Weatherillwrote that English inventories "normally give a full account ofhousehold contents." But do they? They may look precise andcomplete, but such documents can be wrong. Most classes ofeighteenth-century documents cannot readily be checked, butprobate inventories can, at least in part, by comparing them withthe findings of archaeology. The comparison shows that probateinventories were often incomplete, omitting many items of lowvalue, such as earthenware dishes, sewing gear, and children'stoys.A better understanding of eighteenth-century material life can begained by using inventories in conjunction with archaeology,rather than through either one alone.2In order to appreciate the strengths and weakness of botharchaeology and probate inventories, it is necessary to comparethe two kinds of sources in the most direct way possible. A gooddata set for doing so now exists in Delaware, where twelveeighteenth-century farm sites have been thoroughly and profes-sionally excavated in the past fifteen years (Table I). All of thesites are in New Castle and Kent Counties, which comprise thenorthern half of the state, and most of the excavations have beensponsored by the Delaware Department of Transportation. Thesesites provide a large and relatively homogeneous body of data forthe study of one region's eighteenth-century material culture.They include tenant and owner-occupied farms, the status of theoccupants ranging from low at the Augustine Creek North SiteEngland and Maryland, I650o-700," in Carr, Philip D. Morgan, and Jean B. Russo (eds.),ColonialChesapeake ociety(Chapel Hill, I988), 133-I75; Elizabeth A. Perkins, "The Con-sumer Frontier: Household Consumption in Early Kentucky," Journalof AmericanHistory,LXXVIII (I991), 486-5I0; PaulA. Shackel, PersonalDiscipline nd Mlaterial ulture Knoxville,1993); Shammas,"How Self-Sufficient Was EarlyAmerica?"Jolurnalf Interdisciplinaryistory,XIII (I982), 247-272; Walsh, "Urban Amenities and Rural Sufficiency: Living StandardsandConsumler Behavior in the Colonial Chesapeake, I643-I777," Journalof EconomicHistory,XLIII (1983), I09-I1I7.2 Main, "The Correction of Biases in Colonial American Probate Records," HistoricalMethods Newsletter 8 (1974), 10-28; Jones, "Estimatingthe Wealth of the Living from aProbate Sample, "Jolrnal of InterdisciplinaryHistory, XIII (I982), 273-300; Weatherill, ConsumerBehavior, 4; Francoise Piponnier, "InventairesBourguignons (XIVe-XVe siecle)," in van derWoude and Schuurman(eds.), Probatenventories,27-139; Walsh, "ConsumerBehavior, Diet,and the Standardof Living in Late Colonial and Early Antebellum America, I770-1840," inRobert E. Gallman andJohn Joseph Wallis (eds.), AmericanEconomicGrolwthnd Standards fLiving Before he Civil War(Chicago, I992), 217-26I; Anne Yentsch, "Minimum Vessel Listsas Evidence of Change in Folk and Courtly Traditions of Food Use," HistoricalArcllaeology,XXIV (1990), 24-53.



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ARCHAEOLOGY AND PROBATE INVENTORIES | 225Table 1 List of Excavated Eighteenth-Century Sites in Delaware

SITEJohn PowellAugustine Creek SouthWilliam StricklandThomas DawsonAugustine Creek NorthCharles RobinsonMcKean/Cochran IBenjamin WynnWhitten RoadWilliam HawthorneBloomsbury

Darrach StoreMcKean/Cochran II

DATE TYPEI690-1735 Farm1726-1760 Farm1726-I760 Farm1735-1756 Farm1750-S8Io Tenant Farm or

Dwelling1762-1783 Farm1750-I790 Tenant Farm1765-1822 Tenant Farm andBlacksmith's Shop1760-I830 Tenant Farm1760-1900 Farm1761-I814 Tenant Farm

Occupied byNative Americans1775-1860 Store, then TenantHouse1790-I830 Farm

to the bottom end of the upper class at the William StricklandPlantation and the McKean/Cochran Farm. Since all but one ofthe sites dates later than 1724, the data on the early part of thecentury is weak, but for the 1740 to 1800 period, the informationis rich. All of the excavations were accompanied by detailed titleresearch, and the occupants of several sites have been identified.The survival of probate inventories from four of the sites permitsa direct comparison between the findings of archaeology and theinventory lists.3Separate probate inventory studies have also been done aspart of the work on some sites, and this data can be used tocompare archaeology and inventory studies within the Delawarecontext. Two studies are particularly useful. A sample of 200randomly selected inventories from New Castle County, focusingon the 1720 to 1740, 1760 to 1769, and 1790 to 1799 periods,was analyzed as part of the work on the Augustine Creek North3 Summary descriptionsof all sites are provided in Bedell, HistoricContext:The Archaeologyof Farmand Rural Dwelling Sites in New Castleand Kent Counties, Delaware, 1730-1770 and1770-1830 (East Orange, NJ., 1999), 32-42.

DATE OFINVENTORY

17541754

I776

1789



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226 | JOHN BEDELLand South sites. A second study of I90 randomly selected KentCounty probate inventories, most of them from the I740s, I750s,and I76os, was done as part of the work on the Thomas Dawsonsite. Because these studies followed the general methods of Carr,Walsh, and Main, the data should be roughly comparable withtheir results from New England and the Chesapeake.4Archaeologists employ inventory studies because they reportmany items that usually do not turn up at archaeological sites-forinstance, objects that rot away in the ground, such as clothing,bed linens, rugs, and books, as well as valuable objects that wererarelylost or thrown away, such as silver buckles and gold jewelry.In some ways, the evidence from inventories shows that thepicture provided by archaeology alone is not just incomplete butalso misleading. For example, the fact that archaeologists find fewplates on farm sites that date before the introduction of creamwarein the I76os, but that after 1770, they become common does notmean that farmers in Delaware did not use plates before 1760;they simply used pewter or wood plates that did not survive. Thedata from Kent County reveal that in the I740S and I750s, pewterdishes were listed in at least 75 percent of the inventories, eventhose of poor families. A picture of eighteenth-century life drawnentirely from archaeology would be incomplete.Table 2 summarizes the findings of the Kent County inven-tory study, as a point of comparison for the archaeological data tofollow. In general, the Delaware inventories are similar to thosefrom other partsof the thirteen colonies, telling us that the averagehouse was simply furnished. Beds, tables, chairs, and chests are theonly items of furniture listed for a majority of households. Somericher people also had desks, cupboards, or chests of drawers, butthey mainly had more beds, tables, chairs, and chests. Books seemto have been common, especially the Bible. The count of "dairyitems" (primarily churns) is surely too low, since the inventoriesalso show that almost all farmerskept dairycows. More prosperousfarmers were much more likely to have more expensive tools like

4 Bedell et al., The Ordinary nd the Poor n Eiglteenth-CelntryDelaware:Excavations t thleAugustineCreekNorthandSouthSites(7NC-G-144 and7NC-G-145) (Washington,D.C., I998);ideimet al., An OrdinaryFamily in Eighteenth-Century elaware:Excavationsat the ThomasDawson Site (Washington, D.C., I999); Carr and Walsh, "Standardof Living Chesapeake";idenm,Changing Lifestyles";Main, "Standardof Living Southern New England."



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ARCHAEOLOGY AND PROBATE INVENTORIES | 227Table 2 Presence of Selected Items in Kent County Probate Invento-ries, I740-1769

ITEMTOTAL NUMBER OF CASES

Household articles

TOTAL VALUE OF INVENTORYMORE THAN

LESS THAN ;50 T50 TO /225 ;22549 48 24

PERCENT OF HOUSEHOLDS POSSESSING

Bed/table linen 39 55 78Earthenware 71 85 83Teaware 31 53 87Metal pot 96 96 100Clock/watch 2 6 30Table forks 35 49 73Pewter 78 94 96Books 39 74 70

FurnitureBeds oo00 00 100Tables 63 78 96Chairs 6I 72 96Chests 78 98 91Desks 4 I 6iCupboards Io 19 39Dining tables 6 4 22

ToolsSpinning wheel 65 91 I00Loom Io 23 39Dairy items 20 23 17Gun 35 57 87Wagon/cart 8 53 87Blacksmith's tools 8Carpenter's tools Io 28 43Shoemaker's tools 4 4 22Cider mill 6 30Still 17

carts and cider mills, and some farmers probably supplementedtheir income by renting these items to their poorer neighbors.The overall impression is that although a few people in theeighteenth century owned many things, many people did not.Joseph Nixon, who died in 1750 left an estate valued at only fI I2s., as listed in Table 3. Nixon and his wife owned little beyond



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228 [ JOHN BEDELLTable3 Inventory of Thomas Nixon, March 15, 1750One bed & beddingWearingapparelWidow'swearing apparelLargeold BibleLooking glasssmall old tea kettle3 chairsI chestwith meal in itI trunkwith lumberhackledflax, 5 smallpieces new linning and i corse towell2 old trowels & plum line & rulei old mugg with some brown sugarOld earthenware & old tinnI old piggin & snuff bottle2 turkeys

a table, three chairs, a chest, a trunk, some clothes, and a Bible.Their only luxury, if such it can be called, was a single mirror.Their kitchen was finished with a tea kettle, a mug with brownsugar, and "old earthenware & tin." According to the inventories,a majority of poorer people did not have table forks, bed linens,or fine dishes; about one-quarter did not have pewter plates orcoarse earthenwares; and more than one-third did not even owna table. The only articles that almost everyone had were clothes,beds, and metal cooking pots. Only about one-half of middlingfarmers, those worth more than S50o, had bed linens, teawares,or table forks; 28 percent did not even own a chair. By ourstandards, and by the standards of the wealthy in their own time,the material goods of ordinary eighteenth-century people werefew and simple.TESTING INVENTORY DATA Although they are a valuable sourcefor learning about eighteenth-century life, inventories are notwithout their own problems. For one thing, they were the workof the deceased's neighbors, who were appointed by the court.Little is known about how well these amateur assessors were ableto do this complex job. A study of inventories from various partsof the country suggests that they were taken according to unwrit-ten rules about what was countable and what was not. Inventories



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ARCHAEOLOGY AND PROBATE INVENTORIES | 229from New England listed houses and land, but southern invento-ries did not. Those in Delaware tended to omit houses and land,but we have no idea why and according to whose decision.5That a few Delaware inventories listed land suggests that someassessorsdid not fully graspthe local procedure. A few of the rulesin Delaware are inferable from the inventories. The inventoriesalmost always include the value of crops standing in the field butnever the contents of gardens or apples on the tree. Small sumsof money hardly ever appear, although the inventories of richmen often list larger sums. The inventory takers, by commonconsent, may have refrained from listing items that were consid-ered the personal property of widows, such as clothing, sewingkits, and purses. What were the rules that caused people to omitother items that may not appear?6Another possible difficulty with inventories is fraud perpe-trated by heirs, executors, and other interested parties. One studyof a group of Maryland inventories dating to the I67os producedevidence of systematic under-valuation, probably to conceal assetsfrom creditors and competing heirs.7Historians frequently employ inventories to estimate the stan-dard of living in the past, primarily by counting how manyinventories include selected objects-from essentials like cookingpots to luxuries like silver plate. In the manner of Table 2 herein,such studies may try to find out how the number of people whoowned these things changed over time. Carr and Walsh havecreated what they call an "amenities index" to study the level ofcomfort in colonial Virginia and Maryland, and Main has appliedthe same technique to New England.8The amenities list contains twelve items that are intended torepresent the range of goods, from necessity to luxury. Amongthe items chosen are bed or table linen, table forks, books, andsilver plate. The number of times that these items appear in5 Carr and Walsh, "Inventories and the Analysis of Wealth and Consumption PatternsinSt. Mary's County, Maryland, I658-1777," Historical Methods, XIII (I980), 8I-104; Jones,"Estimatingthe Wealth," 277-282.6 Micheline Baulant, "Typologie des Inventaires Apres Deces," in van der Woude andSchuurman (eds.), Probate nventories,3-42.7 KarmaPaape, "Providence:A Case Study in ProbateManipulation, I670-I679," MarylandHistoricalMagazine,94 (I999), 65-87.8 Carr and Walsh, "Standardof Living Chesapeake," I36-138; Main, "Standardof LivingSouthern New England," 126-127.



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230 JOHN BEDELLinventories shows that they became more common in all areas,among all income groups, from 1650 to 1775. These inventorystudies suggest, therefore, that standards of living were rising formost people in the colonies. Questions about the accuracy ofinventories, however, create difficulties for such a straightforwardapproach. Simple errorsby the assessorswould presumably averageout over time, given the large number of inventories available forstudy, but systematic distortions would be more recalcitrant. If theunwritten rules changed over time and some items were countedmore often, or less often, the usefulness of these inventory sum-maries for studying long-term change would be greatly under-mined. One way to check their accuracy is to compare them toavailable archaeological records.The radically different origins of archaeological deposits andprobate inventories raises questions about the value of a directcomparison. An inventory was supposed to be a complete list ofall the objects present on a particular day. An archaeologicaldeposit is created over years, or even decades of trash disposal,though it may represent only a small percentage of the materialthrown away on the site. In general, the only artifacts still iden-tifiable after 250 years in the ground are those that were depositedin a protected environment, such as a well or cellar hole. Refusesimply strewn on the ground has generally been too pulverizedby trampling and plowing for archaeologists to learn anythingfrom it. (All but one of the sites in the Delaware sample had beenplowed; the exception was occupied into the I950s.) On ruraleighteenth-century sites, most trash seems to have been "broad-cast"in yard areas, not thrown into pits.9Even when intact deposits have been identified, archaeolo-gists usually do not know how many years of occupation theyrepresent, or what part of the trash thrown away ended up inthem. Furthermore, not everything used on a site was thrownaway. Some items were regularlybroken and discarded and othersmaintained for decades. Pewter was recycled; silver kept as an9 Lu Ann De Cunzo et al., Final Archaeologicalnvestigationst tle John DarrachStoreSite,DelawareRoute6-WoodlandBeachRoad, SmyrnaSection,DelawareRoute1 Corridor, entCounty,Delaware(Dover, Del., I992), I49-167; James F. Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten:TheArchaeology f Early AmericanLife (New York, I977), 125-126; David J. Grettler et al.,Landowner nd TenantOpportunityn SeventeenthCentur CeCentralelaware:Final ArchaeologicalInvestigationst the RichardWliitehart7K-C-203C) andJonll Powell(7K-C-2o3-H) Plantations,State Route 1 Corridor,Kent County,Delaware Dover, Del., 1995), I44-I53.



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ARCHAEOLOGY AND PROBATE INVENTORIES | 231heirloom. Eighteenth-century blacksmiths' accounts refer to re-pairs made on simple metal tools, such as pitchforks and sickles.Because of these difficulties, no definitive statement about thequantitative relationship between goods listed in inventories andarchaeological finds is now possible. Most likely, a few breakablebut durable items, especially ceramics, may be better representedarchaeologically, but most categories are more likely to appear ininventories.10CERAMICS Two of the twelve items tracked by the Carr andWalsh amenities index are "coarse earthenware" and "refinedearthenware." Their figures show a steadily increasing percentageof households owning ceramics, indicating a rising level of com-fort, but there are reasons to be skeptical about these numbers. Inthe New Castle County, Delaware, sample for the I76os, ceramicswere listed in only 67 percent of the inventories for the middlinghouseholds worth between so5 and z225, but they were foundon every site in the Delaware sample (Table 4). In fact, they areubiquitous in the archaeological record of colonial America, ap-pearing on every domestic site that archaeologists have investi-gated.The archaeological record for the colonial period, on whichmost inventory studies have been focused, contains an enormousamount of coarse earthenware. (In some parts of the country, itbecame rare after 1780.) Moreover, every colonial plantation,tenant farm, urban tenement, and slave quarterthat has ever beentested has yielded sherds of it, in most cases by the thousands."Refined earthenware" is a more difficult category; it is not clearthat we divide coarse from refined wares in the way thateighteenth-century potters or inventory takers did. Carr, Walsh,and Main say nothing about stoneware, some of which wastreated like refined earthenware and some like coarse earthen-ware, further complicating the picture. Because Delaware's inven-tories rarely specify ceramic types before the 1770s, it is difficultto make any comparisons. However, what contemporary archae-ologists consider refined ware has been recovered from mostIo Wade P. Catts et al., The Archaeologyf RuralArtisans:Final Inhestiationsat theMermaidBlacksmithand WlieelvrightShop Sites, State Route 7-Limestone Road, New Castle County,Delaware Dover, Del., I994), 9-i6.



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Table 4 Presence of Selected Items on Eighteenth-Century Archaeological Sites i

SITESJohn PowellAugustine Creek S.Wm. StricklandThomas DawsonAugustine Creek N.Charles RobinsonMcKean/Cochran IBenjamin WynnWhitten RoadWilliam HawthorneBloomsburyDarrach StoreMcKean/Cochran II

DATESI69I-I7351724-1760I726-I762I740-I780I750-I8101762-1783I750-I7901765-1820I750-I830I750-I96II76I-18141775-1860I790-I830

EARTHEN- REFINEDWARE WARE

xxxxxxxxxxxxx

FORKS SPOONSx xx xx x xx x xxx x xx xx xx xx xx x

XXXXX

KK K K

NOTE "x" means present; "- " means absent.



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ARCHAEOLOGY AND PROBATE INVENTORIES 233eighteenth-century sites, including all of the Delaware sites in oursample."

The discrepancy between the ubiquity of ceramics in thearchaeology and their frequent omissions from inventories wasnoticed by French scholars more than twenty years ago, but mosthistorians have not heeded the warning. They have continued toprint numbers suggesting that many households, even wealthyones, owned little or no pottery. Main reported that in ruralMassachusetts, in the 1725 to 1749 period, only 69 percent ofhouseholds worth more than f225 owned coarse earthenware,and only 31 percent owned refined ware. Ceramics are so poorlyrepresented in the inventories that not even new and exoticceramic forms necessarily appear. Yentsch found that orientalporcelain teawares appear on archaeological sites in theChesapeake by I680, but their first listing in surviving Virginiaprobate inventories does not occur until 1717.12Since all of the inventories for excavated sites in Delawarelist ceramics, we have no basis for an archaeological comparison.(William Peery's inventory, made in I789, lists only "a lot ofdishes," but this vague designation certainly could include earth-enware.) However, some inventories itemize ceramic dishes, andwe can compare them to what was found in the ground. WilliamStrickland, whose family occupied his plantation from c. 1726 to1760, worked his way up from the bottom half of taxables in thecounty to the goth percentile (such movement was not unusualin his time). After his heirs left within a few years of his death,the site probably had no other occupants. His inventory, taken in1754, lists no more than nineteen ceramic vessels (Table 5). Usinga technique called "Minimum Vessel Analysis,"which determinesthe smallest number of vessels that could have produced the sherdsfound in the ground, archaeologists identified 237 from the siteof his farm (Table 6). The archaeological sample includes at leastfive types of vessels not listed in the inventory. These includemugs and chamber pots, two items that are archaeologically ubiq-

II Bedell et al., FarmLifeon tlieAppoqluininiink:xcavation f thleMcKeanCocliranFarmSite,New CastleCounty,Delavare(Dover, Del., I999).I2 Piponnier, "Inventaires,"136; Main, "Standard of Living Southern New England";Yentsch, A Chesapeake amilyand Their Slaves(New York, I994).



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234 | JOHN BEDELLTable5 Ceramics Listed in William Strickland'sProbate InventoryTo 2 bowls & a Cheese Pat 2:0To 5 Old pots and 2 Old frying pans & Skillet 5:0To 6 Earthen pans 3:0To 6 Old Earthen pots 4:0To Teaware & some Bowles I2:0

Table 6 Ceramics Identified Archaeologically at the William StricklandSiteTOTAL VESSELS 237tea cups 19 dishes 8saucers Io serving plates 3teapots 3 jars 4posset cups 8 pots 2plates 26 milk pans 23porringers 4 butter pots 11mugs/jugs 41 ointment pots 4mush cups 2 chamber pots 9small bowls 24 child's toy cup Ilarge bowls I5 unidentified 20

uitous but rare in inventories, as well as plates, porringers, andcups.13The inventory of Charles Robinson, a "yeoman" whose farmwas occupied from c. 1762 to 1783, lists "Tea delph ware oneNip [bowl] & 3 plates" and "3 earthen pots and 3 old pans Jug &3 bottles." Both the written record and archaeological evidencesuggest that the house was never the property of anyone exceptRobinson and his wife, who died in I783. Nevertheless, archae-ologists found at least 528 vessels at his farm, including 58 teacups, 52 saucers, and dozens American-made dishes or "pie plates."The apparent detail of this inventory is misleading; many objectshave obviously been omitted from this precise-looking list. Al-though we cannot check them archaeologically, some of the13 Ellis C. Coleman et al., PhaseIII Data RecoveryExcavations f the WilliamM HawthornSite, 7NC-E-46 (Dover, Del., I994), 226; Catts et al., Final Archaeologicalnvestigationst theWilliamStrickland lantationSite (7K-A- 17), A Mid-EighteenthCenturyFarmstead, tateRoute1Corridor,Kent County,Delaware Dover, Del., I995), 18-23, 46, 145.



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ARCHAEOLOGY AND PROBATE INVENTORIES [ 235inventories in the Kent County study seem to have the sameproblem. The inventory ofJohn Virden, a substantial farmerwhodied in 1769, mentions ceramics, but this simple fact betrays theobvious inadequacy of the list that his assessorsprovided, whichincludes "6 earthen potts, 5 full of lard," "3 earthen pots, 2 full ofshugr," and "3 earthen potts with dirty fatt," but no pans, dishes,bowls, or teacups.14The ceramics found in eight well-dated archaeological de-posits from Delaware are listed in Table 7. These deposits are asclose to being "time capsules"asthe archaeological sample permits,since they were all probably created in a decade or less, probablyby a single household. Table 7 provides some idea of the largeamounts of ceramics used and discarded on eighteenth-centuryfarms within ten or so years. The John Powell, Augustine CreekSouth, and Thomas Dawson sites were small, owner-occupiedfarms. Dawson's 1754 probate inventory valued his goods at 5so.Strickland was somewhat wealthier-his goods and chattels beingvalued at 1i89-but not really of the elite. The Benjamin Wynn(a blacksmith) Site was a tenant farm occupied from about 1765to I820, by Wynn himself between I775 and 800o. The occupantsof the McKean/Cochran Farm in the 1750 to 1790 period weretenants, but the farm was large (c. 400 acres), and the tenants seemto have been well above average in wealth. The ceramic collec-tions from these deposits, all generated by typical households,show a substantialnumber of vessels and a great variety of vesselforms, aswell as a wide range of different materials-from Chineseporcelain to coarse, locally made earthenware.15

The Augustine Creek North Site was a small tenant farmlocated on sloping ground next to a swampy stream, an undesir-able location that strongly suggests that its occupants were poor.Two collections of artifactswere identified archaeologically, onedating to the I750s or I76os and one dating to about 800o.Theearlier material (Table 7), which was better preserved, included14 Ronald A. Thomas, Robert F. Hoffman, and Betty C. Zeeboker, ArchaeologicalataRecoveryof the CharlesRobinsonPlantation, 1762-1781, AppoquiniminkHundred,New CastleCounty,Delaware,unpub. ms. (Delaware State Historical PreservationOffice, Dover, 1994).I5 Bedell et al., Ordinaryand the Poor;idemet al., OrdinaryFamily;idem et al., FarmLife;Catts et al., William Strickland lantation;Grettler et al., Mlarginal armson theEdgeof Town:FinalArchaeologicalnvestigationst theMoore-Taylor, enjaminWynn(Lewis-E),and Wilson-LewisFarmsteads,State Route 1 Corridor,Kent County, Delaware(Dover, Del., I996); idem et al.,Landowner nd TenantOpportunity.



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Table 7 Well-Dated Ceramic Collections from Eighteenth-CenturyArchaeological Sites in Delaware

SITE AND FEATUREJohn Powell well

William Stricklandwell

Augustine CreekSouth cellar

Thomas Dawsoncellar

Augustine CreekNorth root cellarMcKean/Cochrancellar

McKean/Cochranwell

Benjamin Wynnwell

TIME FRAMEOF DEPOSIT CONTENTS OF DEPOSITI710-I720 io mugs, 2 cups, 4 plates, Ismall bowl, I jug, I milk pan, 5jars, I bottle, i ointment pot1725-1750 3 teacups, 2 saucers, 3 teapots, 8plates, 4 porringers, 3 smallbowls, II mugs, 7 cups, io largebowls, 3 pitchers, I jugs, 5 jars,7 pots, 9 milk pans, 4 chamberpots1745-I755 29 teacups, 36 saucers, 8 teapots,6 plates, 17 small bowls, I7

porringers, 27 mugs, 3 cups, I5jars, 8 milk pans, I pipkin, I8dishes, 4 jugs, 3 chamber pots1745-1755 29 tea cups, I7 saucers, 7teapots, I creamer, 3 plates, I6small bowls, 7 porringers, IImugs, 7 jars, 4 jugs, I6 milkpans, II dishes, 8 pans, 2 large

bowls, 2 chamber pots, 17unidentified/other1750-I760 I small bowl, I porringer, 8mugs, I jar, I milk pan, 4 dishes,I pan, I ointment pot1750-I770 5 teacups, 7 saucers, 9 bowls, 8

porringers, 2 mugs, IO cups, 5jars, 6 milk pans, i colander, 5dishes, 5 pans, 4 jugs, 2 chamberpots, I ointment pot, 6unidentified/other1750-I770 8 teacups, 12 saucers, I teapot, Iplate, 2 platters, 3 small bowls, 2porringers, 5 mugs, 5 jars, 9 milkpans, I pipkin, 5 dishes, 7 pans,I jug, 2 large bowls, I chamberpot, iI unidentified/other1765-1785 8 teacups, 5 saucers, 5 teapots, Icup, io plates, 3 platters, 4 smallbowls, I mug, 4 jugs, 6 largebowls, 3 jars, I milk pan, Ipitcher, I pan



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ARCHAEOLOGY AND PROBATE INVENTORIES 237coarse earthenware milk pans and jars, slip-decorated dishes, andat least ten ceramic mugs. The later material included severalcreamware plates, hand-painted pearlware teacups and saucers infloral designs, and at least one teapot. Late eighteenth-centuryslave-quarter sites that have been excavated in Virginia have alsoyielded substantialnumbers of ceramics, including refined earth-enware teacups, and hand-painted teacups have also been foundat the homes of tenant farmers on the Appalachian frontier.'6Teacups are of particular mportance to social historians;theydocument the spread of both a new product and a new style ofetiquette. Inventory studies show that in the later eighteenthcentury, at least half of American households were consuming tea.Archaeology suggests that in Delaware the figure was even higher.IsraelAcrelius, writing about 1750, said that in Delaware, tea wasbeing drunk in "the most remote cabins," and archaeologicaldiscoveries imply that he was not exaggerating. Although teawaresare absent from some deposits, notably the pre-179o deposits atAugustine Creek North, all of the sites in the Delaware sampledating to the second half of the eighteenth century yieldedteawares from every period, including well-dated, eighteenth-century deposits at the Benjamin Wynn, Whitten Road, andBloomsbury tenant-farm sites. Deposits securely dated to thelifetime of Thomas Dawson include several high-quality teawarevessels. Teawares are so common in British North America thatnearly all archaeologists use Josiah Wedgewood's creamware andpearlware, which usually appearfirst as teawares, to date deposits.Studies based on the presence of teawares in probate inventoriesare likely to underestimate the rapidity with which tea drinkingspread through the population.17I6 Bedell et al., Ordinary nd thePoor;Bedell, Michael Petraglia,and ChristopherPlummer,"Status, Technology, and Rural Tradition in Western Pennsylvania: Excavations at theShaefferFarm Site," NortheastHistoricalArchaeology, XIII (I994), 29-57; William M. Kelso,KingsmillPlantations,1619-1800:Archaeology f CountryLife in Colonial Virginia New York,I984); Theresa A. Singleton (ed.), The Archaeology f Slaveryand PlantationLife (Orlando,1985).17 Timothy H. Breen, "Baubles of Britain: The American and Consumer Revolutions ofthe Eighteenth Century," Past & Present,II9 (1988), 73-I04, 83; Mark Shaffer et al., FinalPhaseIII Investigationsf tlheWhittenRoad Site, 7NC-D-loo, Whittenor WaltherRoad, NewCastleCounty,Delaware Dover, Del., I988); Shammas,"The Domestic Environment in EarlyModern England and America," in Michael Gordon, (ed.), The AmericanFamily in Social-Historical erspective (New York, I983), 125;Walsh, "ConsumerBehavior, Diet, andStandardof Living."



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238 | JOHN BEDELL

Why are ceramics omitted from so many inventories if theyare so archaeologically ubiquitous? Probably for the simple reasonthat they were not worth much money. Even new earthenwarevessels cost less than a shilling; inventories assign them values aslow as one penny. In Delaware inventories, "wooden ware" (suchas buckets) was often valued at more than the earthernware. Themain purpose of inventories was to provide a guide for thedivision of estates, and heirs were not likely to quarrelover a fewmilk pans. For this very reason, inventories rarelylist pins, scissors,thimbles, and razors, which archaeologists find on almost everysite. Some Delaware inventories, the work of extraordinarilycon-scientious appraisers,contain lists of earthenware that resemble thecollections found on archaeological sites. For example, the inven-tory of John Tilton, a Kent County tenant farmer who died in1746, lists two jugs, three butter pots, one earthen pan, five oldearthen porringers, one small earthen vessel, three earthen plates,a one-pint drinking pot, two pint and a half drinking pots, twoearthen cups, and one saucer. Even John Amyatt, a poor KentCounty shoemaker, whose estate was valued at less than 20o n1744, owned six dishes, six plates, one basin, two bowls, fourearthen pans, four porringers, and nine plates, as well as eightwooden trenchers.18But if earthenwares were so commonplace, why are theylisted more often in the households of the rich, and why do theyget more common over time? Two factors probably contributeto these trends. First, the more earthenware people had, the morelikely appraiserswere to note it. A bowl or two could easily beplaced in a category like "lumber," or "small things forgotten,"but by the middle of the I70os, rich farmers sometimes had wholerooms full of earthenware, including dozens of milk pans and largejars. Rich farmers undoubtedly had more earthenware than poorones, but even ceramics became more common over the courseof the eighteenth century. Minimum vessel counts are frequentlyin the dozens for archaeological sites dating from c. 1700, but inthe hundreds for sites dating from the 1750s and later. Indeed, theincreased reporting of earthenware reflects real differences, both8S For the relativevalues of wooden- and earthenware,see Delaware StateArchives, Dover;New Castle County Probate Files, John Corbett I76I (Delaware probate files are indexed

by county, name and date).



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ARCHAEOLOGY AND PROBATE INVENTORIES 239over time and across social classes, in the ownership of dishes andpots.'9

Factors internal to inventories also help to explain the in-creased reporting. The Delaware inventories for rich householdsseem to have been more detailed than those for the poor, andinventories in general became more detailed throughout thecourse of the eighteenth century. These statements are difficult totest quantitatively, but numerous signs point toward this conclu-sion. Clothes are frequently itemized for the wealthy, sometimesin page-long lists of jackets, belts, handkerchiefs, and so on, butinventories of the poor usually say only "clothing of the deceased."A detailed list is a natural response to the greater challenge pre-sented by a closet full of clothes, but it leads to problems incomparing the inventories of the rich with those of the poor:Since those for the poor itemize nothing, a simple count wouldshow that many more rich people had shirts, shoes, belts, andpants. Likewise, the inventories of the wealthy are more likely tospecify different types of ceramics, chairs, bed linens, and kitchenutensils, probably because these much larger collections of objectswould have been more difficult to compile during the valuation,as well as more difficult to divide among heirs.The evidence for increasing rigor over time is less conclusive,but it is nevertheless suggestive. In Delaware, the oldest preservedinventories, dating from the I69os, are extremely sketchy andsparse. General terms like "lumber" and "household trumpery"grow less common after the early 700oos. The first inventories thatdescribe different types of ceramics, as opposed to just "crockery"or "earthenware,"date from the I770s, as does the first inventoryto list books by title. Several historians have elsewhere notedlong-term trends in inventories' level of detail. Schuurman, forone, observed that Dutch inventories gradually became less de-tailed over the course of the nineteenth century. Any study oflong-term social trends must take into consideration the possibilitythat the sources change with society.2019 Deetz, "Ceramics from Plymouth, I620-1835: The Archaeological Evidence," in IanM. G. Quimby (ed.), Ceramlics n America:WinterthurConference eport1972 (Charlottesville,1972), 15-39.20 Schuurman, "Some Reflections on the Use of Probate Inventories as a Source for theStudy of the Material Culture of the Zaanstreek in the Nineteenth Century," in van derWoude and Schuurrnan(eds.), Probate nventories,77-I89.



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240 I JOHN BEDELLProbate inventories are complex documents, each one differ-ent from the next. Some are detailed; some are not. Some describe

a particular group of possessions in great detail, such as clothingor livestock, and lump other groups into general categories. Muchof the richness of the inventories is lost when they are reducedto simple statisticalsummaries. As noted, some inventories providelists of ceramics that tally well with the archaeological data, andmore could be learned about ceramic use in Delaware from thesedetailed inventories than from a statistical summary of the manysketchy lists. The argument is not that inventories are all "wrong,"only that most of them were never intended to be complete. Theyreflect, in a general way, broad changes in the ownership of manyitems, as well as broad economic trends. But inventory reportstestify to not just the presence of the item but also to its value,as well as to the number of items and the level of detail in theinventory. A graph showing that the percentage of householdsowning earthenware rose during the period from I650 to I750means more than meets the eye when we know that the actualvalue in all periods was close to o00 percent. Presence/absencetables may be informative about the ownership of expensivethings, like silver plate or looms, but they are not as trustworthyabout cheap items like earthenware.OTHER HOUSEHOLD GOODS Archaeology suggests that otherkinds of household goods are also underreported in the probateinventories. Sewing items, such as thimbles and scissors, havealready been mentioned. Children's toys are also rarely listed; astudy of inventories might lead one to think that eighteenth-cen-tury children had none. Most toys were made of perishablematerials, such as wood, but a few kinds, such as ceramic marblesand toy-sized cups, regularly turn up at archaeological sites. Chil-dren's clothes receive little attention in the inventories. Assessorsmay have viewed children's clothes and toys as the children's andnot part of the householder's estate. Three underreported itemsthat were definitely part of the adult world were chamber pots,spoons, and tobacco pipes (Table 4). No tobacco pipes are men-tioned in the 400 inventories of the Delaware sample, though theyhave been found on every eighteenth-century site that has beenexcavated in the state. Because they were cheap, their presenceor absence has few economic implications; it may, however, have



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ARCHAEOLOGY AND PROBATE INVENTORIES | 241cultural significance. Compared with sites in the Delaware Valley,Chesapeake sites yield, on average, at least five times as manytobacco pipe fragments. We do not know whether DelawareValley farmers smoked less than those in the Chesapeake, or theyused another kind of pipe, perhaps corn cob.21Forks represent a special case, since they were not introducedinto the colonies until c. 1700. They arelisted in all the inventoriesfor sites where they have been found archaeologically, but aninteresting pattern develops in the Delaware inventories. Thenumber of New Castle County inventories with forks peaks inthe I76os and then declines in the I79os. Shackel found the samepattern in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. Data published byCarr and Walsh end with the year 1775, but they show that thenumber of households with forks may have peaked at that point.Since it is highly unlikely that the use of forks declined under theearly Republic, another explanation is needed. Figure I interpretsthe rise and fall of forks in the Delaware inventories as the productof two variables, the ownership of forks and the number ofappraiserswho reported them. (The figure lumps allwealth groupstogether, but the trend holds for rich, poor, and middling house-holds.) When forks were rare and something of a luxury, appraisersprobably mentioned them most of the time that they were present.After they became ordinary objects, however, some appraisersbegan to ignore them, or to put them into categories like "goodesin a chest." Even though forks were not expensive, the vagariesof their reporting suggest further difficulties with inventories assources.22

The part that drinking glasses play in the inventories is alsosuggestive. Overall, about 20 percent of the Delaware inventorieslist them; the high point among wealthy households in the I79oswas 43 percent. In the I75os, however, not one of the thirty-sixKent County inventories for households worth less than /50 listsa drinking glass even though they are common archaeologically.Stemmed glasses,the easiest kind to identify from small fragments,have been found at all four of our sites, including the home of21 Bedell et al., FarmLife; idem et al., Ordinary nd the Poor;Catts et al., William StricklandPlantation;Coleman et al., PhaseIII; Schuurman, "Some Reflections," I36; Edward F. Heiteand CaraLee Blume, Mitsawoketto Bloomsbury: heArchaeologyndHistoryof an UnrecognizedIndigenousCommunityn CentralDelaware Dover, Del., I998).22 Shackel, PersonalDiscipline,Io8; Carr and Walsh, "Changing Lifestyles,"78.



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242 | JOHN BEDELLpoor tenants at Augustine Creek North. The remains of at leastfive stemmed glasses were found in one well at the John PowellSite, the home of a middling property owner; the well was filledin about I720.23There are even clearer conflicts between inventories andarchaeological discoveries. William Strickland'sinventory lists noglasses or glassware, but at least three stemmed glasses and onetumbler were found at the farm, as well as a glass candlestick.Likewise, no glasswaresare listed in Charles Robinson's inventory,but archaeologists recovered fragments of glass tumblers and anopaque glass bowl. The values that inventory takers assigned tostemmed glasses and tumblers varied widely, presumably depend-ing on the quality and condition, but, on average, glasses werevalued at just under a shilling, about twice as expensive as earth-enware pans. Because they were highly breakable, it is possiblethat all of Strickland'sand Robinson's had been dropped and thefragments swept away before these men died. But whatever thereason, their absence from the inventories creates interpretivedifficulties.BONES Archaeology agrees with inventories about the distri-bution of large farm animals. Cattle and pig bones have beenfound at every eighteenth-century site excavated in Delaware todate, and these animals are listed in most of the inventories. Wherecalculations are available, cattle seem to supply more meat thanpigs, although the fact that cattle bones are larger and survivebetter than pigs' may bias the sample. Sheep are common, thoughnot as common as cattle or pigs, and their distribution is morevaried. Farmersdiffered widely in the number of sheep that theyraised and ate. Butchered horse bones have been found on mostDelaware sites, although in small quantities, indicating that horsemeat was eaten at least on occasion.24Another discrepancy between inventories and archaeologyarises in the case of smaller animals. "Fowles," as chickens weregenerally called, are listed in few Delaware inventories, butchicken bones have been found on all the sites excavated to date.Strickland's inventory lists no chicken or other "fowles," butarchaeologists found 324 "medium bird" bones that were almost23 Grettleret al., Landowner nd Tenant Opportunity.24 Bedell et al., OrdinaryFamltily;edell, Petraglia,and Plummer, "Status,Technology, andRural Tradition"; Walsh, "Consumer Behavior, Diet, and Standardof Living."



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ARCHAEOLOGY AND PROBATE INVENTORIES 243certainly chicken. Dawson's inventory also lists no birds, thoughchicken bones abounded in the major deposits at his farm.Chickens seem to have been such a common feature of lifethat hardly anyone bothered to notice them, especially not whenvaluing an estate. Russo found that in Talbot County, Maryland,chickens tended to be listed more often in the inventories ofwidows, suggesting that they were often considered the women'spersonal property. This trend, however, does not seem to hold inDelaware. Of the thirty-nine widows' inventories in the Delawaresample, only two mention fowls, even though seventeen mentionother livestock.25

Bones from archaeological sites also show that hunting wascommon, especially of such small animals as squirrels, rabbits, andturtles. The bones of these animals have been bound on all of thesites with good collections. Fishing is indicated by the bones ofcatfish and perch that were probably taken from streams with aline and hook.Not one inventory in the Delaware sample lists a dog or acat. Although both animals breed prolifically and could usually behad for free, a good hunting dog must have had some worth.Evidently, pets were not part of the inventory process. Dogs andcats were both common in eighteenth-century Delaware; theirbones have been found on all sites that yielded large collectionsof animal bones. The reason why their bones are not always inevidence is not because these animals were eaten, but becausewhen they died, their carcasseswere thrown out with the rest ofthe trash. There is not much archaeological indication of petsentimentality in eighteenth-century rural America.26THE MATERIAL CULTURE OF POVERTY Perhaps the biggest dif-ference between the inventories and the findings of archaeologyconcerns the feeling or atmosphere that each conveys about lifein poor households. Descriptions based on inventories make thematerial life of the poor seem grim. For example, "Fourpots (twobroken) and pot hooks, skimmer, spit and dripping pan, and threeold pewter dishes accounted for all of the utensils and dishes withwhich Faulkner's wife prepared and served the family's meals."25 Jean Russo, Free Wo)rkersn a PlantationEco0no11)y:albotCounty, Maryland,1690-1759(New York, I989), 31 n. 39.26 Schuurman did not find dogs and cats listed in the nineteenth-century Dutch inventoriesthat he studied, although birds were ("Some Reflections," 136).



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244 | JOHN BEDELLCeramics may have been cheap, but the addition of a dozen orso earthenware dishes and maybe a few wooden trenchers wouldmake a major difference in how we imagine life in the Faulknerhousehold. The archaeological ubiquity of ceramics demands thatwe make this addition.27The ceramics from eighteenth-century archaeological sitesmay imply more thanjust the presence of unrecorded dishes. Thepotsherds found on the sites of tenant farms and slave quartersareoften brightly colored, and other decorative items, such as beadsand fancy buttons, also turn up from time to time. These objectsconvey a sense of beauty absent from the inventory lists. Becausethe clothes and dishes represented by those pretty buttons andcolorful potsherds may have been purchased already used, withtears or cracks, they may mean little in economic terms, but theymight have great import in cultural or psychological terms. Theysuggest that the people who owned them were trying to beautifytheir lives in the ways they could afford. The occasional appear-ance of other inexpensive luxuries, such as stemmed glasses, jew-elry, and molded shoe buckles, supports this notion. Even themost utilitarian ceramics, such as American-made earthenwarepans and dishes, often had elaborate, slip-trailed patternsthat madethem objects of style almost as much as kitchen utensils. In thelight of these small archaeological discoveries, the sheer meannessof the inventories gives way to a more lively and cheerful picture.28Tea drinking was an aristocratic refinement widely adoptedby poor and ordinary people, and, because it has been muchstudied, it provides a model for social and material ambitions.Archaeology shows that tea drinking may have spread even morerapidly among poor farmers than the inventories suggest, sincesherds of teacups and teapots are abundant even on slave and poortenant sites by the late eighteenth century. Poor people seem tohave changed the meaning of tea, using tea time as a pick-me-upin the middle of their long work days, as well as a pleasantdiversion. But the desire to have fine tea equipment spread withthe tea-drinking habit. In the eighteenth century, teawares werethe finest and most expensive dishes on almost every site. By 1800,hand-painted pearlware teacups were common even in poor27 Russo, Free Workers, 10.28 Compare the statements made by Henry Glassie about the poor country people ofcontemporary Irelandin Passing he Time in BalleyrmenoneBloomington, I995), 361-372.



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ARCHAEOLOGY AND PROBATE INVENTORIES 245households. Archaeology shows that few people in eighteenth-century America were so poverty-stricken that they had no desire,or capacity, to keep up with fashions like tea drinking and to ownbeautiful things.29A comparison of probate inventories and archaeological findingsshows that neither, by itself, gives a complete picture of materiallife in the eighteenth century. Some kinds of information areavailable only from one of the two sources. The hunting of smallanimals, such as rabbits and turtles, is reflected only in the bonesfound by archaeologists, whereas bed linens, books, and pewterdishes can be studied only through the inventories. On somequestions, the two data sets can be used to check each other.Archaeology can show that the probate lists of ceramics are in-complete, and the probate inventories can testify that the occa-sional hammer or saw found by archaeologists represents manymore objects that never made it into the ground.Even where they agree, archaeology and written recordsprovide a more detailed and nuanced picture together than apart.For example, both archaeology and the written records suggestthat most people lived in small, poorly built, wooden houses. Butthe written records indicate only the height of houses, the con-struction materials, and the number of rooms; archaeology givesthe dimensions of houses and reveals cellars, chimneys, glasswin-dows, and other fine details. Combining archaeological data withprobate inventory studies is a better way to achieve a completeunderstanding of material life in colonial households.

The structure of contemporary scholarship, however, makessuch an interdisciplinary approach to the eighteenth centurydifficult. Archaeological data is rarely published in a form thathistorians can find and employ; even historians studying ceramicsusually rely solely on documentary sources. When more archae-ological data is made available to historians, and more dialoguetakes place between practitioners of the two disciplines, a fullerand more sophisticated appreciation of eighteenth-century mate-rial life may begin to emerge. The data presented here are in-tended as a small step in that direction.29 Sidney Mintz, Sweetnessand Power: The Placeof Sugarin ModernHistory (New York,1986), 180-183.

archaeology and probate inventories in the study of 18th century life (john bedell)30sep

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