If you found the map of Breed’s Hill and Bunker Hill on last Monday’s post by Abigail Adams—“My bursting Heart must find vent at my pen”—helpful in visualizing what she described, I’m delighted. As you can imagine, I have done, and still do, a lot of fossicking through letters and diaries in libraries and historical societies. (Don’t you like that word “fossicking”? It’s informal Australian, and originally meant searching for gold in abandoned workings. I really like the notion of women’s letters and diaries being thought of as “gold.”)

I am so excited, however, when I find a site online that has everything one could possibly want in one place, in this case, historical maps—on the website of The Florida Center for Instructional Technology. Located in the College of Education, University of South Florida, at Tampa, the Center was established to encourage the integration of technology into classroom instruction in the state’s schools by providing leadership, instructional materials, and support services. Its online publications and products are impressive, and teachers anywhere (and others, like me) can use them free of charge, the only requirement being to credit the institution. Maps ETC provides more than 5,000 royalty-free historic maps from around the world. This was the source for the map I used in the Abigail post. I could spend hours exploring the clip art, photographs, historic documents, audio files of literature, lesson plans—you name it—the site offers. There is even a category called Tech-Ease offering assistance with technical matters. I heartily recommend this site to teachers, students, readers, researchers, and lovers of cartography. Sources like this give one hope that education in these United States can and will be improved. Maybe this blog can be of some help too.

The question that arises whenever a price or a sum of money appears in a document is: how much would that be today? There is no easy answer. Although the cost may have been expressed in British pounds, shillings and pence, it is unlikely that British currency would change hands since there was actually very little of it in circulation in the colonies, or later in the United States, as it was not legal to remove English money from the Mother country, nor was it legal to import gold or silver.

Because any sort of money—coin or paper—was scarce, for purchases made by ordinary people, so-called “commodity money” was often used. This was a kind of barter arrangement with the terms spelled out for specific products, the most common being dried Indian corn. David Mowry paid five bushels of corn for a book he purchased in 1799: William Sewel, The History of the Rise, Increase and Progress, of the Christian People Called Quakers. For planters, for example, who shipped products to Britain, an account was maintained there upon which they could draw to make purchases, perhaps for furniture, to be sent to America.

For monetary transactions, “hard money” was the preferred medium, that is coins struck from precious metals. Since their worth vis-a-vis each other had to be calculated, tradespeople kept a scale to determine a particular coin’s value by weight of silver or gold. Because it was the most stable and least debased, the most common circulating coin in America, indeed in international trade, was the Spanish Milled Dollar, a real de a ocho, an eight-real silver coin, known as a “piece of eight.” It was the coin on which the original United States dollar was based and was legal tender in the United States until 1857.

As if this isn’t complicated enough, each colony, later state, issued its own distinct currency usually denominated in pounds, shillings and pence. See that of Massachusetts on the left.
Then there were “continentals,” printed by the early national government under the Confederation. You have probably heard the expression “not worth a continental,” indicating its next-to-nothing value.

Back to the question: how much would that be worth today? There is a website that will give a rough comparison using the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Five dollars in the year 1776 would be worth $102 in 2000. But I suspect that those who ask the question about worth are really asking what a certain amount of money can buy, or the cost of living. Again it’s hard to make comparisons. Here, however, is an interesting reckoning: George Washington”s salary as president from 1789 to 1797 was $25,000. That would be the equivalent of $615,000 today, which figure compares favorably with the current president’s salary: $400,000 with a $50,000 expense allowance, as well as a generous pension and other benefits. Meaning that the purchasing power of George Washington and President Obama is roughly the same. Does this help?

The image for commodity money is in the University of Notre Dame Department of Rare Books, Rare Book Collection, BX7630 Se88e. There is an informative essay on the subject of money in the Williamsburg journal, Summer 2002.

Abigail Adams kept her husband, who was in Philadelphia in 1775, informed about the news in and around Boston. This is her account of the battles of Breed’s Hill and Bunker Hill.

[Boston] Sunday June 18 1775 Dearest Friend
The Day, perhaps the decisive Day is come on which the fate of America depends. My bursting Heart must find vent at my pen. I have just heard that our dear Friend Dr. [Joseph] Warren is no more but fell gloriously fighting for his Country—saying better to die honourably in the field than ignominiously hang upon the Gallows. Great is our Loss. … The Battle began upon our intrenchments upon Bunkers Hill, a Saturday morning about 3 o clock and has not ceased yet & tis now 3 o’clock Sabbeth afternoon.

Tis expected they will come out over the Neck to night, & a dreadful Battle must ensue. Almighty God cover the heads of our Country men, & be a shield to our Dear Friends. How many have fallen we know not—the constant roar of the cannon is so distressing that we can not Eat, Drink or Sleep … I shall Tarry here till tis thought unsafe by my Friends, & then I have secured myself a retreat at your brothers [Elihu] who has kindly offerd me part of his house [in Randolph, Massachusetts]. I cannot compose myself to write any further at present.
June 25 1775 BraintreeWhen we consider all the circumstances attending this action we stand astonished that our people were not all cut off. They had but one hundred feet intrenched, the number who were engaged, did not exceed 800, & they had not half amunition enough. The reinforcements not able to get to them seasonably the tide was up & high, so that their floating batteries came upon each side of the causway & the row gallies keeping a continual fire. Added to this the fire from fort hill & from the Ship, the Town in flames all round them & the heat from the flames so intence as scarcely to be borne; the day one of the hottest we have had this Season & the wind blowing the smoke in their faces—only figure to yourself all these circumstances, and then consider that we do not count 60 Men lost. My Heart overflows at the recollection. …

The excerpts are from In the Words of Women, Chapter 1, page 35. An enlarged map can be found HERE, courtesy of the Florida Center for Instructional Technology.

It may interest the readers of this blog to learn that the authors/editors of In the Words of Women: The Revolutionary War and the Birth of the Nation, 1765-1799 will be making a presentation at the conference of The National Council for History Education in Kansas City, Missouri, at the end of March.

Our session, “(Say), Can A Woman’s Voice an Audience Gain?” is scheduled for 2:40 pm on March 24. We will be sharing our experiences in locating, validating, and transcribing writings by women of the period, with emphasis on the increase in electronic resources. Participants will engage in exercises that will be helpful in choosing teachable documents for classroom use. We will be distributing sample lesson plans based on materials from the book that will show how students, through the use of document-based activities on appealing subject matter, can gain insights into events, actions, and lives during the Revolutionary Era.

Look for the lesson plans which will be posted on this blog.

Lexington Books, the publisher of In the Words of Women features a blog on its website to which authors can contribute. This week a piece I wrote called “The Mail” will be posted. I am presenting it here.

My mother was for many years the postmaster (not postmistress) in a small town in Pennsylvania. The document officially appointing her in 1936, signed by Franklin Roosevelt and James Farley (postmaster general at the time), hangs on the wall in my study. She was proud of the fact that she was able to institute home delivery of mail, assign routes, manage a staff of carriers, and eventually to secure a brand new post office for the town.

What I recall most vividly during her tenure is that the post office was a place for residents to meet, to gossip and exchange news, and a place to get help. Ours was a community of first and second generation immigrants, the largest contingent from Eastern Europe. Although my mother was born in the United States, her ancestors, and a majority of the other residents in town, came from Poland. An English-speaking adult, trained as a school teacher, my mother was able to retain enough fluency in Polish to write and translate letters to and from the “old country” for the many patrons who came to the post office and to help them with the complicated process of mailing packages to their relatives at Easter and Christmas.

Today the United States Postal Service is a semi-independent entity, expected to deliver the mail and discharge its other responsibilities, while minimizing costs if not turning a profit. Other companies like FedEx and UPS have siphoned off business from the Postal Service. And other forms of communication—e-mails and social media—have taken the place of letters. I mourn the loss of the art and practice of letter-writing, and it pains me to think that post offices in many small towns are likely to be closed in 2012. I cannot but believe this will be a loss for those communities.

I fear the loss most especially because I, with two co-authors, Louise North and Landa Freeman, have been immersed in letters for a book that was published by Lexington last year, In the Words of Women: The Revolutionary War and the Birth of the Nation, 1765-1799. The letters written by women to husbands, children, parents and other family members, as well as friends, during the period indicated in the title, document the pain of separation and enable us to glimpse the details of their lives.

Sarah Perkins Hodgkins expressed so poignantly what letters meant when she wrote to her soldier husband in 1776: “Loving Husband these Lines come with my kind regards to you hopeing they will find you in as good health as they leave me and the rest of the family at this time. I received two Letters from you since [you] left home & was glad to hear you were well. I want to hear again. Don’t mis any oppertunity you may have of writing to me Sence that is all the way we have to converse together.”

From another collection of letters compiled by my colleagues and me—Selected Letters of John Jay and Sarah Livingston Jay (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2005)— come Sarah Jay’s endearing references to her letters as “little fugitives” and “messengers of love.” John writes that he has “twenty little things to say” to his beloved helpmeet. I particularly like the lines by Sarah written to her husband on May 10, 1790: “It gave me pleasure in perusing yr. last favor to observe from the date of it that we had both been engaged on the same day perhaps at the same instant in writing to each other. What a delightful circumstance! it is that our thoughts & affections are not bounded by the space we occupy, & likewise that by the invention of letters we can make each other sensible that they are not.”

The sentiments of these women almost bring tears to my eyes. I do fervently hope that we as a society will not lose the desire or ability to communicate via paper letter delivered by a real live postal worker based in a local post office.
Janet Wedge