of goods.
When wheat was sown over a small area, it was perhaps the common plan to prepare the land for its culture with the hoe.[1] There were several kinds of this implement, the hilling, the weeding, and the grubbing. According to another classification, the broad and narrow were distinguished. The greater number were probably imported. In 1690, Fitzhugh is found sending instructions to his merchant in London to consign to him so many hoes, and his example was doubtless followed by others.[2] There are, however, in the inventories, many references to the “Virginia hoe,” that is, the hoe manufactured in the Colony, which must have been skilfully fashioned if an inference can be drawn from its valuation, the average price ranging from nineteen pence to two shillings.[3] Spades were also used to a small extent, perhaps, in the preparation of the soil for wheat; they were sometimes made of steel, and were appraised as high as thirty pence.[4] The seed of wheat appear to have been
- ↑ Hugh Jones’ Present State of Virginia, p. 124. “It is common only by hoeing up the ground and throwing seed upon it and harrowing it in.R 21;
- ↑ Letters of William Fitzhugh, June 11, 1695.
- ↑ See inventory of Thomas Jefferson, 1698, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. I, p. 209. See also Major inventory, Records of York County, vol. 1675-1684, p. 48, Va. State Library. Among the articles included in the appraisement of the personal estate of Robert Beverley, 1687, were twenty-eight grubbing hoes. See inventory on file in Middlesex County. Thomas Haynes of Lancaster County was, according to the inventory of his personalty, the owner of twenty-two broad hoes and twenty narrow. Records of Lancaster County, original vol. 1674-1687, f. p. 62. The Stone inventory in York, 1648, included three small garden hoes. Vol. 1638-1648, p. 391.
- ↑ Records of Henrico County, vol. 1677-1692, p. 97, Va. State Library; Records of Elizabeth City County, vol. 1684-1699, p. 492, Va. State Library.
