R
At 06:02 PM 8/24/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>***** Probate records as an historical source
>
>Michael A. Bellesiles
>
>...The issue is further confused by the fact that probate practices
>changed over time. Studies in Colonial Massachusetts estimate the
>percentage of deceased inventories at between 25% and 90%, with Kevin
>Sweeney's study of Wethersfield, Connecticut, indicating that 70% of the
>town's taxpayers in 1673 were inventoried, compared to 50% in 1773. (43)
>Those not counted form a long list: "most women, most native Americans,
>most soldiers, and all transients, sojourners, children, apprentices,
>live-in relations, servants or slaves and their families." (44) These are
>the poorest Americans. In Concord, Massachusetts, between 1653 and 1700,
>281 deaths were recorded in the public records, with fifteen additional
>known deaths not recorded. Of this number, 45 men and four women (16.5%)
>were inventoried. (45) Philip Greven found probate records for 45% of the
>deceased taxpayers in Andover, Massachusetts. (46) Daniel Scott Smith's
>study of eighteenth-century Hingham, Massachusetts found inventories for
>42% of the adult men and 4% of the women. (47) John Waters likewise found
>inventories for 45% of the adult males in his sample from
>eighteenth-century Guilford, Connecticut. (48) Alice Hanson Jones felt
>that just 32.7% of "potential wealth holders" were inventoried in New
>England in 1774. (49) In contrast, Jackson Turner Main wrote that probate
>inventories were available for 80% of the adult male decedents in
>seventeenth-century Connecticut. (50)
>
>But these scholars are not always talking about the same things. Some are
>using sample sets of populations, others the complete population, others
>just taxpayers or Jones' "potential wealth holders," making these
>percentages difficult to compare. Sweeney and Smith have found a clear
>class bias in probate inventories, with the wealthiest being most likely
>to be inventoried. In Scott's study, 78.3% of the top 40% measured by
>taxable wealth are inventoried, but just 13.8% of the bottom 20%. Both of
>these scholars therefore feel that probate records may show more property
>than is normal. (51) In terms of this particular study, then, those most
>likely to own guns and books are most often inventoried....
>
>... One-third of the bottom 30% (21 of 66) of inventories Hawley studied
>contained firearms, with guns appearing in 74% of the top 10% of the
>inventories examined (16 of 22). (77). Hawley is the only other historian
>with whom I am familiar who has addressed the question of gun ownership in
>the probate records. Finding far fewer than she had expected, she
>speculates, "Appraisers in Surry County may have selectively omitted the
>guns of poor men from their inventories so that their heirs could meet
>their civic responsibility." (78) But since guns could not be seized for
>the payment of a debt, it is not clear why such concealment would be
>necessary. Hawley assumes that since the law required that men have arms
>for militia service that they must have had them. But she also notes "nor
>are there any known cases of presentment before the court for failure to
>have the requisite equipment." (79)...
>
>
>...43.Kevin M. Sweeney, "Furniture and the Domestic Environment in
>Wethersfield, Connecticut, 1639-1800," Connecticut Antiquarian 36 (1984):
>10-39. Sweeney's study is based on 786 inventories.
>
>44.Benes, ed., Early American Probate Inventories, 11.
>
>45.Ibid.
>
>46.Philip Greven, Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in
>Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca, NY, 1970).
>
>47.Daniel Scott Smith, "Underregistration and Bias in Probate Records: An
>Analysis of Data from Eighteenth-Century Hingham, Massachusetts." William
>and Mary Quarterly 32 (1975): 104.
>
>48.John Waters, "Patrimony, Succession, and Social Stability: Guilford,
>Connecticut in the Eighteenth Century," Perspectives in American History
>10 (1976): 138.
>
>49.Alice Hanson Jones, "Wealth Estimates for the New England Colonies
>about 1770." Journal of Economic History 32 (1972): 116.
>
>50.Jackson Turner Main, Society and Economy in Colonial Connecticut
>(Princeton, 1985), 48, 60-61.
>
>51.Sweeney, "Using Tax Lists to Detect Biases in Probate Inventories," in
>Benes, ed., Early American Probate Inventories, 35-36; Smith,
>"Underregistration and Bias in Probate Records," 105....
>
>76.Anna L. Hawley, "The Meaning of Absence: Household Inventories in Surry
>County, Virginia, 1690-1715," in Benes, ed., Early American Probate
>Inventories, 23-31.
>
>77.Ibid., 27-28.
>
>78.Ibid.
>
>79.Ibid., 28n.
>
><http://www.emory.edu/HISTORY/BELLESILES/webprobate.update1.html> *****
>
>As one of Bellesiles's primary historical sources for evidence of the
>scarcity of guns in pre-Civil-War America is probate records, it is
>possible that gun ownership was even less widespread than _Arming America_
>suggests.
>--
>Yoshie
>
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