Crops Made on the Custis Plantations by Joseph Valentine, 1760–70, 1770
Crops Made on the Custis Plantations by Joseph Valentine, 1760–70
[1770]
Editorial Note
The table prepared by GW is one of three in the Custis Papers (ViHi) that GW constructed to present data relating to crop production on the Custis plantations for the eleven years from 1760 through 1770. In a second table, not printed here, to which GW gives virtually the same heading, GW breaks down these figures by tabulating for each year the number of hogsheads and the weight of his own dower tobacco and John Parke Custis’s tobacco, “In the Leaf” and “Stem’d.” He also indicates how many bushels of GW’s corn were harvested in King William County and how many in York, as well as how many of Custis’s bushels came from New Kent County, from York County, or from the Eastern Shore. The third of these tables in the Custis Papers is an accounting of the income for John Parke Custis, and for GW, arising on the Custis property each year from rents, corn, wheat, oats, peas, pork, beef, mutton, veal, butter, wool, cider, leather, seine, carpenters, marsh, flat (boat) hire, slave hire, hay, and “Sundry.” GW figured that in eleven years £10,299.19.10 was made on these goods and services from the Custis plantations, which, it should be noted, did not include tobacco, the main money crop, of which more than a million pounds was sold in the eleven years. The Custis Papers contain sheets with more detailed tabulation from which GW drew to construct his three tables. For instance, there are Joseph Valentine’s listings for most of the eleven years of the individual hogsheads with the gross and net weight of each and often with GW’s notation indicating the plantation on which the tobacco in a particular hogshead was raised or by which overseer. The table printed here is GW’s most succinct summary of crop production on the Custis plantations in the 1760s.
Table of Crop Yields
Crops of Corn, Wheat, & Tobacco made by Mr Josh Valentine from the year 1760 to 1770 Inclusive
| Tobacco | ||||||
| G. Washington | J.P. Custis | Total | ||||
| Years | Hhds | Weight | Hhds | Weight | Hhds | Weight |
| 1760 | 30 | 31506 | 54 | 57910 | 84 | 894161 |
| 1761 | 34 | 34154 | 77 | 85494 | 111 | 1196522 |
| 1762 | 29 | 34593 | 64 | 72718 | 93 | 107311 |
| 1763 | 36 | 41316 | 97 | 107171 | 133 | 148487 |
| 1764 | 32 | 32897 | 87 | 93642 | 119 | 126539 |
| 1765 | 20 | 20042 | 71 | 66886 | 91 | 86928 |
| 1766 | 17 | 18930 | 51 | 55362 | 68 | 74292 |
| 1767 | 17 | 17902 | 36 | 37558 | 53 | 55460 |
| 1768 | 20 | 21288 | 56 | 62383 | 76 | 83671 |
| 1769 | 17 | 17119 | 38 | 41832 | 55 | 58951 |
| 1770 | 22 | 22996 | 70 | 72236 | 92 | 95232 |
| 1/11 | 1045939 | |||||
| average | 95085 | |||||
| Corn | Wheat | |||||
| GW | JPC | Total | GW | JPC | Total | |
| Years | Barls | Barls | Barls | Bushls | Bushls | Bushels |
| 1760 | 550 | 1607 | 21573 | 206 | 476 | 6824 |
| 1761 | 559 | 1540 | 2099 | 78 | 253 | 331 |
| 1762 | 542 | 1637 | 2179 | 97 | 600 | 697 |
| 1763 | 584 | 1712 | 2296 | 78 | 280 | 358 |
| 1764 | 668 | 1473 | 2141 | 115 | 642 | 757 |
| 1765 | 461 | 1609 | 2070 | 38 | 3 | 41 |
| 1766 | — | — | — | 181 | 764 | 945 |
| 1767 | 576 | 2190 | 2766 | 56 | 82 | 138 |
| 1768 | 484 | 1990 | 2474 | 91 | 913 | 1004 |
| 1769 | 440 | 1648 | 2088 | 93 | 20 | 113 |
| 1770 | — | — | — | 219 | 600 | 819 |
| 1/9 | 20270 | 1/11 | 5885 | |||
| average | 2252 | average | 535 |
AD, ViHi: Custis Papers. The table is printed as GW constructed it except that the sections on corn and wheat are printed after that on tobacco rather than to the right of it, which necessitated the repeating of the years in the first column.
1. According to the table described in the introductory note to this document, nine hogsheads of GW’s tobacco weighing 9,010 pounds and twenty of JPC’s weighing 21,174 pounds were filled with stemmed tobacco, the remainder being “In the Leaf.” On the sheet in the Custis Papers with Joseph Valentine’s listing of the individual hogsheads of the tobacco from the Custis plantations in 1760, GW noted that of his own thirty hogsheads of tobacco from his dower property, all consigned to Robert Cary & Co., the tobacco in eighteen was made in King William County, six at Ship Landing, and six at Bridge Quarter. The tobacco belonging to John Parke Custis came from Great House (12 hhds.) and Mill Quarter (7 hhds.) in York County; Rockahock (10 hhds.), Brick House (11 hhds.), Old Quarter (4 hhds.), and Harlow’s (5 hhds.), in New Kent; and the Eastern Shore (5 hhds.). The first forty of John Parke Custis’s hogsheads listed here were consigned to Cary.
2. The combined weight of tobacco is 119,648, not 119,652.
3. In the table referred to in note 1, GW records a yield for his dower property of 355 bushels of corn from King William County and 254½ from York County, a total of 609½ bushels rather than the 550 recorded here. For John Parke Custis, he records 899 bushels in New Kent County and 478 in York, a total of 1,377 instead of 1,607 as here. In subsequent years the totals for corn in the two tables are identical.
4. In his account of the annual income in the decade 1760 to 1770 derived from specified products and services of the Custis plantations other than tobacco (see the introductory note), GW records for John Parke Custis an income of £709.0.2 from these things in 1760 and for the dower holdings £93.17.11. John Parke Custis’s corn accounted for £326.3.⟨6⟩ of his total and his wheat, £38.18.0, while GW realized £31.18.6 for his corn and £13.16.9 for his wheat.