Buying into the World of Goods: Early Consumers in Backcountry Virginia

TWO: Getting the Goods: Local Acquisition in a Tobacco Economy

two Getting the Goods Local Acquisition in a Tobacco Economy 42 It is relatively easy to see how goods like expensive tall case clocks marked wealth, power, or, in the case of the clergy, perhaps culture or learning. Although the number of clocks owned by those in the middling ranks would rise as the end of the century approached, there were still few people who had them. If we limited our view to just such elite objects, we would uncover little evidence of a rise in consumerism in eighteenth-century Western Europe or America. It is the increase in small, less expensive manufactured and processed goods that tells the story. A bit of tea, a printed handkerchief, a looking glass, or a creamware plate, each of these are the kinds of new objects that entered into people’s lives in the backcountry. William Mead purchased such items of everyday life in 1771: textiles, thread, handkerchiefs, shoes, hats, nails, even a teakettle. Each represented a common item, but his hats were “fine,” his handkerchiefs “printed,” his rug “silk,” his textiles “Irish” linen, and his teakettle copper. Not only were many of his purchases of better quality; they were also often on a larger scale—a thousand nails or thirty ells of osnaburg. Sometimes he personally traveled to the store. Occasionally he sent his son Mahlon or another of the men from the plantation. On November 16, 1771, slave Daniel bought two pair yarn hose on his account. Further, although Mead purchased many things at Hook’s store, using family, servants, and unrelated men to conduct his business, he did not make any payments on these purchases that autumn. Like those of many customers, William Mead’s account with John Hook reveals consumer choices. It reveals prices and qualities of goods. It reveals patterns of behavior, such as Mead’s predilection to shop for large quantities when court was in session, intimating that he was then in New London attending to business, playing the traditional masculine role of a tobacco planter. Finally, the store account reveals relationships—John Hook, William Mead, and clocks, representing the triangulation of merchant, customer, and consumer goods. Those relations, rippling out and multiplying, explain much about the large economic and social changes of the eighteenth century . They offer up the drama in the world of goods. Buying from John Hook was one way to get household goods in the backcountry. There were also numerous outlets, a range of specialists, and a set of suppliers that complicate our efforts to assess customer choice, supply, and access. Any schemata that tackled this system would be a complex matrix that used distance traveled, degree of choice, and kind of establishment as variables of supply and wealth and gender, elements of customer freedom .1 A sizeable body of evidence suggests the existence of a hierarchical demand system in which wealthy families who had more to spend and who had extensive and powerful business and family networks were given greater latitude by merchants on the issue of debts. On the other end of the spectrum , merchants allowed the poorer sorts to arrange for the extension of small amounts of credit and to make payments through numerous petty forms of exchange, from labor to home-produced goods. There were also systems that had no exchange component, such as inheritance. Most Sovereign Consumers: Elite People’s Web of Goods The wealthiest people in Virginia had a range of options in acquiring goods. A consignment system allowed planters to order almost anything desired. For example, in 1770 Henry Fitzhugh of Stafford County ordered from England a man’s “Neat, Fashionable Gold Watch to run upon a diamond, the works to be cased and Enameled,” a “neat light post Chariot,” and a “Woman’s suite of Rich Brocade ready made up,” including with his order the young woman’s measurements and a color sample that he wished the new gown to “be agreeable with.” In addition, he ordered Brussels lace, a “Paste Necklace and Ear Rings set in Gold Suitable to Above Brocade” and a matching pair of women’s fashionable silk shoes, a stomacher, and sleeve knots.2 In all, he needed a London shopper with taste and knowledge to serve as consumer proxy in creating the desired matching ensemble. The consignment system gave the purchaser almost unmediated access to all the shops in England, constrained only by the diligence of one’s merchant factor or friend. John Mercer sent a lengthy...