and seventy acres; Nathaniel Bacon, Sr., to five thousand more or less; John Page, to seven thousand; Richard Lee, to twelve thousand; William Byrd, to fifteen thousand;[1] and finally Robert Beverley, to thirty-seven thousand. The names of a dozen additional colonists of almost equal prominence might be given who had acquired as great an area of soil by public grants, but the instances which have been mentioned are typical of their class.[2] It is probably not going too far to say that the average size of the landed property held by the members of this class was at least five thousand acres.
What was the value of an acre in Virginia in the seventeenth century? The basis which we have for an answer to this question is very insufficient. The records of York, between 1633 and 1700, have preserved forty-seven instances in which tracts of land in that county aggregating 3664 acres were sold, not for tobacco, the price of which was fluctuating, but for money sterling. The average value of an acre in these forty tracts was slightly in excess of half a pound sterling, the value of the whole being £3134. In Rappahannock, twenty-one tracts covering an area of 11,519 acres brought when sold £1604, or about one-seventh of a pound sterling an acre. In Elizabeth City, twelve tracts aggregating 2094 acres brought £431, or about one-quarter of a pound sterling an acre. In Henrico, twenty-five tracts aggregating 6734 acres brought £632, or about one-tenth of a pound sterling. It is not surprising to find that land in the older counties, like York and Elizabeth City, commanded a
- ↑ These different figures are merely approximate. It is not improbable that the planters named obtained by patents a larger area of soil than that stated in each case. These enumerations were made from entries in the land patent books.
- ↑ William Fitzhugh possessed over 50,000 acres. See his will, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. II, p. 276.
