 |
 |
April 22, 2008 9:07 AM
Potato Cash
The following transaction never took place, (I'm fairly certain), and I submit it to you lawyers in the crowd, particularly those lawyers familiar with 18th century jurisprudence, for your ruling as tavern-keeper-justice of the peace:
The Great Potato Transaction
Edward Pierce v. Captain Smith
Edward Pierce sought to purchase 6 Yards of English broadcloth so as to have a new suit made by way of trading 2 ¼ bushels of potatoes for the wool.* Captain Smith sent his wife, with the wool to Edward Pierce’s farm and was met by Pierce’s bond servants, Hogan and Doyle, on the road leading to the farmhouse. Mrs. Smith is extremely near-sighted and mistakes Hogan for Mr. Pierce, turns over the wool, and asks Doyle, thinking it Pierce, to bring the 2 ¼ bushels of potatoes to the Smith Farm. Mr. Doyle responds that the eating potatoes are burried under two feet of hard, frozen ground, but that some fine planting potatoes can be had in the root cellar, and wouldn’t an enterprising farm like the Smith’s prefer the planting potatoes, in return for what Mr. Doyle observes is very rough-sewn English broadcloth indeed? Mrs. Smith agrees.
Neither of their masters are very happy, and are not privy to the full details of the exchange. Captain Smith has 3 ¼ bushels of whiskered potatoes to plant, as opposed to eat, and Edward Pierce has a horse blanket to be made into a gentleman-farmer’s suit of clothing. Suit is brought by Edward Pierce.
Edward Pierce does not want to admit why he was not privy to the transaction, because, he was, in fact, asleep—at noon—and does not want to own to his napping. There is an uneasy, back-story stand-off between Captain and Mrs. Smith, as she maintains she was never told whether her husband wanted planting or eating potatoes.
When you are writing a screenplay, uh, rooted, in the past, a thousand questions of truth attach themselves to every moment of imagined dialogue. At one point in our pilot episode, Molly Cooper, the wife of a prospering New England merchant admits that she is "undone" by her "weakness for lace." It seems to fit her character, to be certain, and I am fairly certain lace was considered a bit of a luxury, but how much of a luxury? Would it be something completely beyond the reach of a frontier farm wife, or just a tad extravagant? Was lace made widely in the colonies? My suspicion is yes, because inkle and tape looms abounded, but did lace have gradations in quality? (Yes, absolutely, to be certain.) The point is--I could go off and do a one year study on lace, but then the pilot would never be written. How many lace trails can you follow?
Ironically, my Riley ancestors were Nottinghamshire lace-makers, prior to their migration, but I can't find anyone in the family who has even the faintest memory of a lace-making story.
*The basis for these values are drawn from 1761 Mathew Patten transactions which indicate Mathew purchased 9 bushesl of potatoes for 12 pounds, 10 shillings Old Tenor, (3,000 pence) or 333 pence per bushel. In the same year, he purchased 10 ½ yards of “worsted and wool cloath” for 1260 pence, (120 pence per yard). By this evaluation six yards of fabric would be 720 pence, or not quite 2 ¼ bushels of potatoes. (720/333)
Note: May 8, 1767 Patten begins planting potatoes.
Note: On March 4, 1767, Patten “opened our potatoes that were buired and were sound and good”
Note: Zachariah Chandler got 4 bushels of potatoes (total) from Patten on May 18, 1770. (Not clear the price)
Note: In May 1772, Patten sold a bushel of potatoes to Hugh McColley for a pistereen, (a Spanish silver coin), in December of 1766, a pistareen purchased 2 lbs of sugar. (In 1761, 336 pence purchased 2 lbs of sugar; pistareen = 336 pence and had stayed relatively inflation free over those years???)
More of the Farm Journal -- April 21, 2008
| |
 |
 |
 |
 |