3 Many studies of wealth distribution in the Chesapeake colonies report the following results.
Sources include Kelly, “Surry County”; Rutman and Rutman, A Place in Time, Explicatus, 117-32; Main, Tobacco Colony, 55; Robert E. and B. Katherine Brown, Virginia, 1705-1786: Democracy or Aristocracy? (East Lansing, 1964), 13, 75; Lee Gladwin, “Tobacco and Sex,” JSH 12 (1978), 57. The Browns omitted tenants, whose numbers may be computed from data in Evarts B. Green and Virginia D. Harrington, America Population before the Federal Census of 1790 (1932, rpt. New York, 1966), 150-51. This has been done here.
The Rutmans found the following patterns for Middlesex County, Virginia:
Wealth Type |
Period |
Gini |
SSTT |
SSBT |
n |
Personal wealth |
1650-59 |
|
|
|
23 |
|
1700-19 |
|
|
|
120 |
|
1720-50 |
|
|
|
192 |
Servants and slaves |
1668 |
|
|
|
83 |
|
1687 |
|
|
|
231 |
|
1724 |
|
|
|
254 |
Land |
1668 |
|
|
|
83 |
|
1687 |
|
|
|
215 |
|
1724 |
|
|
|
242 |
Gini = Gini Ratio; SSTT = size share top tenth; SSBT = size share bottom tenth.
Gloria Main’s research on Maryland inventories yielded much the same findings: a Gini ratio of .59 for gross personal wealth in 1656-83; rising to .65 in 1694-1705 and to .73 in 1715-19.
Probate records understate inequality in Virginia (more so than in Massachusetts or Pennsylvania), and yield results very different from land lists and tax assessments when the latter are adjusted for the large number of landless adult males. In Middlesex County (1704-5), the Gini ratio of land distribution among adult white males was .76; the proportion owning no land was above 43%. When black males are included, the Gini ratio rises to .81 and zero holding to 58%. In Richmond County (1711), wealth was even more concentrated: the Gini ratio was .90 among white males and .94 when blacks are included. In a population of approximately 2,500 people, 13 planters possessed 61% of taxable acreage and only 72 others owned any land at all; most white male adults were landless. In Lancaster County (1750-55) nearly half of the adult male population were slaves; another quarter were landless white tenants, and 21 great planters owned between 500 and 2,000 acres apiece.