![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
Township tax lists for 1783 and 1793 are used to examine the distribution of wealth and economic mobility in York County, Pennsylvania following the Revolutionary War. Measures of inequality are inconclusive, but the typical York County household was worse off in 1793 than in 1783: median wealth fell 5 percent. The poorest households recorded an increase in assessed wealth. Over 40 percent of households disappeared from the tax lists, with the least wealthy being the most likely to leave. Households that remained in the county were far more likely to see an improvement in their relative status than a decline.
Notes
1 Bezanson, Anne, Robert D. Gray, Miriam Hussey. 1936. Wholesale Prices in Philadelphia, 1784-1861. Philadelphia, PA, 392; Lindert. Peter H. and Jeffrey G. Williamson. American Incomes Before and After the Revolution. Journal of Economic History 73 (2013):725-765; Rosenbloom, Joshua L. and Thomas J. Weiss. Economic growth in the mid-Atlantic region: Conjectural estimates for 1720 to 1800. Explorations in Economic History 51 (2014):41-59; McCusker, John J. and Russel R. Menard. 1985. The Economy of British America, 1607-1789. Chapel Hill, NC, 63. On economic conditions in the 1780’s see Nettels, Curtis P. 1962. The Emergence of a National Economy 1775-1815. New York. Bjork, Gordon C. 1964. The weaning of the American economy: Independence, market changes, and economic development. Journal of Economic History 24:541-560, and Jensen, Merrill. 1965. The New Nation: A history of the United States during the confederation 1781-1789. New York. Bouton, Terry. 2006. Moneyless in Pennsylvania: Privatization and the depression of the 1780’s. In The economy of Early America: Historical perspectives and new directions, ed. Cathy Matson, 218-235. University Park, PA, focuses on economic problems in Pennsylvania.
2 Smith, Billy G. 1984. Inequality in late colonial Philadelphia: A note on its nature and growth. William and Mary Quarterly 41:629-645; Lemon, James T. and Gary B. Nash. 1968. The distribution of wealth in eighteenth century America: A century of change in Chester County, Pennsylvania, 1693-1802. Journal of Social History 2:1-24; Ball, Duane E. 1976. Dynamics of population and wealth in eighteenth-century Chester County, Pennsylvania. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 6:621-644; Simler, Lucy. 1990. The landless worker: An index of economic and social change in Chester County, Pennsylvania, 1750-1820. Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 114:163-199; Marietta, Jack D. 1995. The distribution of wealth in eighteenth century America: Nine Chester County tax lists, 1693-1799. Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 62:532-545. Ridner, Judith. 2010. A town in-between: Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and the early mid-Atlantic interior. Philadelphia, 180, finds that the top half of Carlisle residents saw their share of taxable wealth rise from 84 percent in 1779 to 87 percent in 1795. Studies of economic inequality elsewhere in the United States in this time period include Turner, Jackson. 1954. The distribution of property in post-revolutionary Virginia. Mississippi Valley Historical Review 41):241-58, Kulikoff, Allan. 1971. The progress of inequality in revolutionary Boston. William and Mary Quarterly 28:375-412; Soltow, Lee. 1981. Land inequality on the Frontier: The distribution of land in East Tennessee at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Social Science History 5:275-291; Waterhouse, Richard. 1988. Economic growth and changing patterns of wealth distribution in colonial lowcountry South Carolina. South Carolina Historical Magazine 89:203-17, and Sarson, Steven. 2000. Distribution of wealth in Prince George’s County, Maryland, 1800-1820. Journal of Economic History 60:847-855.
3 United States Census Office. 1791. 1st census, 1790. Return of the whole number of persons within the several districts of the United States. Philadelphia, 45. Hays, Jo N. 1992. Overlapping Hinterlands: York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, 1800-1850. Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 116:295-321, and Latzko, David A. 2010. York County’s manufacturing economy in 1810. Journal of York County Heritage:23-29, are two studies of the early nineteenth century York County economy. Adams County was created in 1800. The other backcountry county west of the Susquehanna River was Cumberland County. The counties further north and west are too distant from Philadelphia and are better classified as frontier counties. Unfortunately, nearly all of the 1783 tax lists for Cumberland County are lost.
4 The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801. Harrisburg, 1906, Volume 11, Chapter 1021, 81-91.
5 The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801. Harrisburg, 1904, Volume 10, Chapter 961, 389.
6 The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801. Volume 10, Chapter 961, 390.
7 The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801. Volume 11, Chapter 1137, 479.
8 The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801. Harrisburg, 1909, Volume 14, Chapter 1560, 76-79.
9 York County, PA Board of County Commissioners. Tax Records 1783. Microfilm Reel #5740, York County Archives and York County, PA Board of County Commissioners. Tax Records 1793. Microfilm Reels #5224 and #5225, York County Archives. I would like to thank the staff of the York County Archives for their assistance. Portions of the 1783 tax lists have been published as part of the township histories in John Gibson, History of York County Pennsylvania, From the Earliest Period to the Present Time. Divided into General, Special, Township and Borough Histories, With a Biographical Department Appended. Chicago, 1886 and by William Henry Egle. Pennsylvania Archives, Third Series, Volume 21. Harrisburg, 1898, 659-820.
10 The information in all of the tables and figures was compiled by the author from the manuscript tax schedules. Several of the inequality measures in Table 3 and the Generalized Lorenz curve were calculated using Achim Zeileis, ineq: Measuring Inequality, Concentration, and Poverty, R package version 0.2-13, 2014, https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=ineq. The figures in this paper were created using Hadley Wickham, ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis. New York, 2016.
11 The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, Volume 11, Chapter 1021, 90. See John Gilbert McCurdy. 2005. Taxation and representation: Pennsylvania Bachelors and the American Revolution. Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 129:283-315, for a discussion of the political status of single freemen in Pennsylvania.
12 It is not necessary to adjust the reported wealth figures to make comparisons between 1783 and 1793. Although the cost of living was likely lower in 1793 than in 1783 (see the estimates of Officer, Lawrence H. and Samuel H. Williamson. The annual consumer price index for the United States, 1774-Present. MeasuringWorth. URL: http://www.measuringworth.com/uscpi/), the underlying valuations used by township tax assessors in 1783 and 1793 to determine household wealth are quite similar so that the assessed wealth tabulated by assessors reflects the same underlying amount of real property in 1793 as in 1783. Cows were assessed at £3 in Hellam Township in 1793. Horses were valued at £6 and land was assessed at between 10 to 95 shillings an acre depending on the quality and usage. Valuations in 1783 are less transparent and less consistent from taxpayer to taxpayer, but cows were valued at £3 by Hellam Township assessors, horses at £6 to £10, and land at between 10 and 95 shillings per acre. Also, while the value of Pennsylvania currency fluctuated relative to specie over the 1780’s, those fluctuations were frequently ignored in transactions between merchants and in payments to workers (see Bezanson, Anne, Blanch Daley, Marjorie C. Denison, and Miriam Hussey. 1951. Prices and inflation during the American Revolution, Pennsylvania, 1770-1790. Philadelphia, 326. Consequently, changes in reported assessed wealth between 1783 and 1793 correspond to changes in the real quantity of taxable property.
13 Adams, Donald R. Jr. 1968. Wage rates in the early national period: Philadelphia, 1785-1830. Journal of Economic History 28: 404-426.
14 The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, Volume 11, Chapter 1021, 91. On the economic status of one category of households with zero wealth, see Simler, “The Landless Worker”.
15 Bricker, Jesse, Lisa J. Dettling, Alice Henriques, Joanne W. Hsu, Lindsay Jacobs, Kevin B. Moore, Sarah Pack, John Sabelhaus, Jeffrey Thompson, and Richard A. Windle. 2017. Changes in U.S. Family Finance from 2013 to 2016: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances. Federal Reserve Bulletin 103:1-42.
16 Shorrocks, Anthony F.. 1983. Ranking income distributions. Economica 50:3-17.
17 Barker, Howard F. 1969. National stocks in the population of the United States as indicated by surnames in the census of 1790. In Surnames in the United States Census of 1790, An analysis of national origins of the population, ed. American Council of Learned Societies, Committee on Linguistic Stocks in the Population of the United States. Baltimore, 126-163; Dull, Keith A. 2007. Early families of York County Pennsylvania, Volumes 1 and 2. Westminster, MD; Dull, Keith A. 2003. Early German settlers of York County, Pennsylvania. Bowie, MD; Dunaway, Wayland F. 1945. Early Welsh Settlers of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 12:251-269; Dunaway, Wayland Fuller. 1928. The English Settlers in Colonial Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 52:317-341; Dunaway, Wayland Fuller. 1929. The French racial strain in Colonial Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 53:322-342; Early Lutheran Baptisms and Marriages in Southeastern Pennsylvania, The Records of Rev. John Casper Stoever from 1730 to 1779. Baltimore, 1982; Egle, William Henry. 1898. Notes and Queries historical, biographical and genealogical relating chiefly to interior Pennsylvania. Harrisburg; Egle, William Henry. 1896. Pennsylvania genealogies; Chiefly Scotch-Irish and German. Harrisburg; Hersh, Grier. 1897. The Scotch-Irish in York and Adams Counties. In The Scotch-Irish in America, Proceedings and addresses, Eighth Congress. Nashville, TN, 319-379; Myers, Albert Cook. 1985. Immigration of the Irish Quakers into Pennsylvania, 1682-1750, With Their Early History in Ireland. Baltimore; Pennsylvania Society of Friends, Pennsylvania Quaker Records: Warrington, York County; Little Brittain, Lancaster County; Centre, Centre County; West Branch, Clearfield County; Dunnings Creek, Bedford County (2 Parts). London, 2017); I. Daniel Rupp. 1876 A Collection of Upwards of Thirty Thousand Names of German, Swiss, Dutch, French and Other Immigrants in Pennsylvania from 1727 to 1776. Philadelphia; A. Stapleton. 1901. Memorials of the Huguenots in America with special reference to their emigration to Pennsylvania. Carlisle, PA; Walmer, Margaret B. 1989. 100 Years at Warrington: York County, Pennsylvania Quakers marriages, removals, births and deaths: Newberry, Warrington, Menallen, Huntington and York Meetings. Bowie, MD; Abdel Ross Wentz. 1916. The Beginnings of the German Element in York County, Pennsylvania. Lancaster, PA.; Don Yoder. 1980. Pennsylvania German immigrants, 1709-1786: Lists Consolidated from Yearbooks of The Pennsylvania German Folklore Society. Baltimore.
18 On the issues in estimating national origin, see Purvis, Thomas L. 1987. Patterns of ethnic settlement in late eighteenth-century Pennsylvania. Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 70:107-122.
19 The tax lists do not provide the ages of the heads of household making it not possible to use the matching algorithm developed by Abramitzky, Ran, Roy Millm, and Santiago Pérez. 2019. Linking individuals across historical sources: A fully automated approach*. Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History. DOI: 10.1080/01615440.2018.1543034. See Christen, Peter. 2012. Concepts and techniques for record linkage, entity resolution, and duplicate detection. Berlin, 163-184 for a discussion of the issues with measuring record matching quality.
20 Lemon, James T. 1972. The best poor man’s country: A geographical study of early southeastern Pennsylvania. Baltimore, 73. See Dunaway, Wayland Fuller . 1931. Pennsylvania as an early distributing center of population. Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 55:134-169 for a discussion of the role of Pennsylvania as a source of emigrants to other states.