Radio Script 235

Little Talks on Common Things
March 23, 1980

Frequently coming to my attention are old account books. One such, covering the years 1824 and 1825 was shown me a few weeks ago. Unfortunately we cannot identify the country storekeeper who kept that book, nor even the town where his store was located, but there is evidence that it was somewhere in Central Maine. The book deserves attention on this program because of what it reveals about Maine life at the time when Maine had just become a separate state.

At that time Maine was almost completely a rural, agricultural and lumbering state, with a large majority of its people living on self-sustaining farms. The items they had to buy at the store were remarkably few. The villages then had no such thing as grocery stores. In fact, groceries and food products made up only a small part of the business done at the general stores.

Only thirty food items are mentioned at all in this store’s accounts during 1824 and 1825. Five of them concern grain that was raised on the local farms, corn, oats, rye, wheat and buckwheat. Prices were very low. Corn was 47 cents a bushel, oats 32 cents, rye 54 cents, and buckwheat 25 cents. The book,~/gg~tion of wheat are several charges for a few pounds of wheat flour at four pence a pound, a little over four cents at the current rate for a dollar. White cane sugar was sold, usually one or two pounds at a time. It was priced at 12 cents a pound for the big lumps that were suspended by string from the dining room table and chipped off a bit at a time. Brown sugar cost 18 cents a pound, and fine white sugar, very rare, cost 25 cents. Although coffee was priced at 25 cents a pound, this store sold very little of it, but they did sell large quantities of tea. What was called tea brought 75 cents a pound, and Souchong tea 82 cents.

Every household had to have one necessity it could not raise on the farm – salt. Coarse, rock salt was 19 cents a peck; finer, but still not for table use, was Liverpool salt at 26 cents; and fine table salt was expensive, 25 cents a peck. Note that even table salt was not sold by weight. All kinds were sold by measure, at so much per bushel or peck. So a whole bushel of fine, table salt cost just one dollar. The huge lumps of mineral salt placed in barns and pastures for the cattle, could be had for one cent a pound.

Besides salt, people needed spices, and nearly every page of this old account book records some such sale. Pepper was 2 cents an ounce, ginger 2 cents, cinnamon 3 cents, and nutmegs were 4 cents apiece.

This store was apparently located in a village where people did not have farms, for the store sold some butter and eggs. Butter priced from 15 to 20 cents a pound according to season, and eggs from 10 to 18 cents a dozen. They also sold a few potatoes. During the two years covered by the book the price of potatoes ranged from 19 to 50 cents a bushel. The only meat sold by this store was salt pork, for which the common price was nine cents a pound. They did sell salt fish at five cents a pound. And in late spring and early summer they dispensed fresh shad and mackerel, usually at 4 cents. To tone up soup and other dishes one could buy onions at 75 cents a bushel. At that time no one ever heard of a pound of onions.

There is no mention of the sale of any kind of fresh fruit – no oranges, no lemons, no bananas, no peaches, pears or grapes, and none of fresh apples. The only reference to apples is a sale of a peck of dried apples for 32 cents.

In respect to all the food sold in this store, what seems remarkable to us today is how many commodities were sold by measurement, not by weight. I assure you that the practice continued well into the 20th Century. From 1906 to 1913, when I spent every summer in a Maine grocery store, we were still measuring potatoes, green peas, string beans, and apples. We were selling dried beans – the common navy bean – by the quart, but we did weigh them, one pound, 14 ounces to the quart. By this time dealers were no longer selling salt by measure – all was weighed.

Now we need to explain some of the prices in that 1824 general store. By the end of the century it was common to have articles, especially canned goods, priced at 2 for a quarter or 3 for a quarter, and many articles had a price ending in 5 or 0, such as 25 or 50 cents. Why the odd figures for prices in the old store nearer the beginning of the century?

The answer is that the common use of the British units, pounds, shillings, and pence still prevailed. But, to my surprise, the exchange rate between the old British and the new American money was not what I have found in many other accounts. The common exchange was what was called the New England shilling, valued at 1/6 of a dollar or 16-2/3 cents. The rating in this book, in which prices are given in shillings, and the total price of the purchase carried out in dollars and cents, was 8 shillings to the dollar, or 12 cents. For instance, we find entries like these: 2 gals. molasses at 3 shillings per gallon, 75 cents; 5 pounds mackeral at 4 pence, 21 cents; 10 pounds wheat flour at 4 pence, 42 cents; 2 nutmegs at 4 pence each, 9 cents.

By far the most frequent sales in the old store were alcoholic beverages and tobacco. Most common of all was rum. Unlike some of the old stores, this one made no distinction between New England and West Indies rum. The latter was considered of better quality and brought a higher price. The difference was that West Indies rum was made in the Carribean islands from molasses extracted there from the sugar cane, while New England rum was made in New England, chiefly in Boston, from. molasses brought from the islands. This Maine dealer had one uniform price for his rum, 50 cents a gallon. That he sold a lot of it one gill at a time shows that it was consumed right in the store. But of course he had numerous sales ranging from 12 cents for a quart to 50 cents for a full gallon.

In the book’s early entries, whiskey and gin are called “spirits,” also priced at 50 cents a gallon, but by late 1825 the entries were labeled whiskey at the same price. Brandy was a bit more expensive, 6 shillings a gallon or 75 cents. The rum hogsheads were in great demand for cider and vinegar barrels, and this dealer sold those empty containers for $1.50 to
$2.00 apiece, according to quality.

The quantity titles for tobacco were much different from what they had become when I had close acquaintance with a village store. One twist of tobacco was 7 cents. One cut was 12 cents. A plug was 34 cents. Actually, this old store sold more snuff than it did tobacco. Ordinary snuff was three pence an ounce, Scotch snuff three shillings a pound or 37 cents, and snuff six shillings or 75 cents. Clay pipes were one cent each. One tobacco item read: 1/2 pound Scotch snuff for Mrs. Newbury, 19 cents.

Although most people in those days had cider made from their own apples, it was a beverage for which the store had a few sales. Its price was 19 cents a gallon. The dealer made a good profit for one record shows his purchase of a barrel of cider for 12 shillings, $1.50. In fact the empty barrel itself cost him more than half as much as the cider. He paid for the barrel 7 shillings or 87 cents.

Before we turn to other commodities besides food and drink, one further general comment should be made. Everything of this nature was sold in bulk, by weight or measure. Bottles were indeed in use for medicines and sometimes for other liquids. In fact, the sale of rum or whiskey was often accompanied by the sale of a bottle or a jug. But there was no such thing as canned goods. The production of canned fruits and vegetables, especially the famed Maine canned corn, came much later. Almost nothing was packaged – not the coffee, spices, not the later popular crackers and cookies. Not even the everywhere-used baking soda called saleratus, nor its companion cream of tartar, came prepackaged. Every store had not only scales but measures containing a gill, pint, quart or gallon, and a pint, quart, peck, half bushel and bushel.

The store, of course, sold dress goods, and items for sewing. The store had muslin at 16 cents a yard and gingham and calico at 19 cents. Seersucker was 50 cents a yard, and prices of other cloth ranged from cambric at 25 cents a yard to satinette for one dollar a yard. Rather expensive was black crepe, demanded for funerals, at 82 cents a yard. The store’s most expensive cloth was jersey at $1.25 a yard. It seems unusual that the store sold flax for 11 cents a pound. Altogether this one store carried 19 different kinds of cloth. Some unusual names were Bombazette, Stripe and rabbit.

To go with dress goods the store sold pearl buttons at one shilling a dozen, and large bone buttons at three cents each. Ribbon was 2 cents to 12 cents a yard, according to width. A paper of pins cost one shilling, needles one cent each, hooks and eyes also a cent apiece, and a thimble at four cents. Near the end of 1825 came the book’s first reference to a spool of thread. All previous references were to balls, skeins and hanks. There are such items as a stick of twist for 6 cents. The store even sold shoe buttons at 3 cents a pair. Ready to wear articles were few, but they did exist. Evidently the cobbler still made boots, but fancier shoes could be bought at the store, especially women’s shoes. The common kind cost $1.25. Morocco were $1.50. Calf skin shoes were $1.19. And we note one unusual sale of a pair of seal skin shoes for $1.75. A dress-up man’s hat, called a Roman hat, sold for $3.00 the total of three full days’ wages. No ordinary workman could
afford one. In the whole book there is not a single sale of men’s clothing, not even underwear. But a man did have to pay 12 cents for a pair of suspenders to hold up his pants. White gloves, demanded like crepe for funerals were 44 cents a pair, and more durable Woodstock gloves were 5 shillings or 62 cents. A boy’s wool hat cost 7 shillings and a straw hat 25 cents. Long, cotton stockings were 44 cents a pair.

The greatest variety of articles counted in that early store were household items for kitchen, workshop and farm. All sorts of dishes, from tableware to big jugs, tubs and vats were sold. One could get a half gallon jug for 25 cents, a half dozen cups and saucers for a dollar, a broom for 19 cents, a butcher knife for 25 cents, and glass tumblers for 7 cents each.

Now let us take a look at some items uncommon today. Brown earthernware crock, 17 cents; 2 gallon stone jug, 44 cents; feathers, 44 cents a pound; coffee mill, $1.25; iron pot, 75 cents; shoe hames, 37 cents; a lantern (spelled lanthon) cost 62 cents. Indigo was 22 cents an ounce; sulphur 19 cents a pound. A bed cord cost 32 cents, wool socks $1.25 a pair and brimstone, nine cents a pound. This dealer sold a lot of bees’ wax at 37 cents a pound.

Most people made their own soap, but the store sold them the lye or potash for it. Candle-making at home had become rarer by 1825, but the store still sold tallow by the pound and wick by the yard. When soap was sold it was always by the pound, the homemade variety bringing 6 cents, but important Castile soap a full shilling.

Men did a lot of hunting and fishing in those days. Gun powder was 50 cents a pound and flints one cent each, and shot 12 cents a pound. Axe handles were 12 cents each; nails 4 cents a pound; tacks 1000 for 22 cents. File of a handsaw cost one shilling. A whipstock cost 37 cents and its lash six cents.

Men did shave even 150 years ago. A razor cost 37 cents, shaving soap seven cents, a shaving brush 12 cents, and a hairbrush 44 cents. The store even sold glasses, then called spectacles. A pair of spectacles cost three shillings, 37 cents, and a case to put them in was seven cents. Highly prized by everyone was a silk handkerchief. This set one back a full day’s work, $1.00.

In fact not everyone got as much as a dollar a day for his work at that time. This dealer recorded paying 25 cents for a half day’s work cutting and piling wood, 50 cents a day for hoeing corn, 75 cents a day for haying. Only once does his records show payment of one dollar a day. That was for a man to thatch a roof. His helper got fifty cents for the day’s work. The most expensive single item in the record is $72.50. That was the price the dealer got for his brown mare.

And with the last gallop we say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1980