In 1680, Colonel Fitzhugh, who resided in the Northern Neck, in a letter addressed to Captain William Partis, states that he had entered into a bargain with Mr. Vincent Goddard to pay twenty-nine pounds sterling for two slaves; it is to be presumed that this sum represented what he gave, not for both, but for each one, unless they were mere youths.[1] In the proposal which he made to Captain Jackson in February, 1682, with reference to the cargo of negroes who were to be consigned to him in the following autumn, he states in detail the prices he was willing to pay for them. Three thousand pounds of tobacco were to be the valuation of every boy and girl whose ages ranged from seven to eleven; while for those whose ages ranged from eleven to fifteen, it was to be four thousand, and for those whose ages ranged from fifteen to twenty-five, five. The price of tobacco at this time was from one penny and a half to two pennies a pound.[2]
When the master of the Society, the Bristol ship which went ashore in Accomac, came to reward the persons who had assisted him in landing the negroes he had on board, he paid James Lamont thirty pounds sterling in the form of a boy and girl.[3] This is found to be the figure at which two African children were appraised in Henrico County in 1697, the value of a negro man on the same occasion being placed at twenty-five pounds.[4] In Elizabeth City, the prices of slaves in the same decade appear to have been substantially the same as in Henrico. In the inventory of the estate of William Marshall, two negro men were entered at fifty pounds sterling, and
