Ground rents against populist historiography: Mid-atlantic land tenure, 1750-1820

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Volumn 29, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 23-42

  Wright, Robert E ^a  

^a TEMPLE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0041087111     PISSN: 00221953     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/002219598551625     Document Type: Article

References (64)

1. Gordon S. Wood, "The Illusions of Power in the Awkward Age of Federalism," paper presented at the Philadelphia Center for Early American Studies, January, 1996;
2. Gordon S. Wood, "idem, "The Enemy Is Us: Democratic Capitalism in the Early Republic," Journal of the Early Republic, XVI (1996), 293-308;
3. Herbert E. Sloan, Principle and Interest: Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Debt (New York, 1995), 112-124.
4. For examples of the new financial history, see Richard Sylla, Jack W. Wilson, and Charles P. Jones, "U.S. Financial Markets and Long-Term Economic Growth, 1790-1989," in Thomas Weiss and Donald Schaefer (eds.), American Economic Development in Historical Perspective (Stanford, 1994), 28-52;
5. Wright, "The First Phase of the Empire State's 'Triple Transition': Banks, the Market Democracy, and Federalism in New York, 1776-1838," Social Science History, XXI (1997), 521-558.
6. The best work about early American interest rates remains Sylla and Sidney Homer, A History of Interest Rates (New Brunswick, 1996; rev. 3d ed.), 274-326, esp. 286-288.
7. Currently under construction, but still more than a year from completion, is a weekly series of United States securities yields from 1790 to 1830, reported in Sylla, Jack Wilson, and Wright, "America's First Securities Markets, 1790-1830: Emergence, Development and Integration," paper presented at the thirty-seventh annual cliometrics conference, University of Toronto, May 16-18, 1997.
8. Richard M. Cadwalader, A Practical Treatise on the Law of Ground Rents in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1879), 134.
9. Vincent D. Nicholson, A Treatise on the Law Relating to Real Estate in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1929), 61.
10. The nature of manorial leases is much debated. The best recent historiographical review argues that the leases impeded market development. Martin Bruegel, "Unrest: Manorial Society and the Market in the Hudson Valley, 1780-1850," Journal of American History, LXXXIII (1996), 1393-1424.
11. For the contrasts between the New York and Pennsylvania contracts, see Edward Allinson and Boies Penrose, Ground Rents in Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1888), 18.
12. Philadelphia County Deedbooks, 1770-1820, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (hereinafter HSP). As used here, artisans were makers of things. For a list of typical artisanal occupations, see Charles S. Olton, Artisans for Independence: Philadelphia Mechanics and the American Revolution (Syracuse, 1975), 4-5.
13. Edward Shippen to James Hamilton, Lancaster, 9 March 1769, Edward Shippen Letterbooks, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia; Nicholson, Treatise on Real Estate, 62;
14. Allinson and Penrose, "Ground Rents in Philadelphia," 3-6;
15. Cadwalader, Practical Treatise, 109 n.;
16. Donna J. Rilling, "Building Philadelphia: Real Estate Development in the City of Homes, 1790 to 1837," unpub. Ph.D. diss. (Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1993), 7, 14, 38-54;
17. Peter A. Coclanis, The Shadow of a Dream: Economic Life and Death in the South Carolina Low Country, 1670-1920 (New York, 1989), 102-103;
18. Thomas M. Doerflinger, A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise: Merchants and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia (Chapel Hill, 1986);
19. Diane Lindstrom, Economic Development in the Philadelphia Region, 1810-1850 (New York, 1978).
20. In an otherwise excellent article, Mary Schweitzer misconstrued ground rents as ninety-nine year leases "calculated at one-tenth the value of the land" ("The Spatial Organization of Federalist Philadelphia, 1790,"Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XXIV [1993], 48-49, n. 14).
21. Jerome H. Wood, "The Town Proprietors of Lancaster, 1730-1790," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, XCIV (1972), 346-368.
22. According to a 1796 court case cited in Cadwalader, Practical Treatise, 6-7, 71, "much valuable property [was] held in the city of Philadelphia under a yearly rent charge, and this [was] the case in general in most of the county towns in this State."
23. Allinson and Penrose, "Ground Rents in Philadelphia," 3-6.
24. Baltimore Whig, 2 Jan. 1811, listed forty-one ground rents for sale within the city of Baltimore. For secondary studies, see Beverley W. Bond, Jr., The Quit-Rent System in the American Colonies (New Haven, 1919), 219;
25. Lewis Mayer, Ground Rents in Maryland (Baltimore, 1883);
26. Cadwalader, Practical Treatise, 108 n.;
27. Russell Menard, "Economy and Society in Early Colonial Maryland," unpub. Ph.D. diss. (Univ. of Iowa, 1975), 75-76.
28. Ground rents, for example, were unknown in Massachusetts. James Sullivan, The History of Land Titles in Massachusetts (Boston, 1801), 66.
29. For a technical analysis of ground rents, see Allinson and Penrose, "Ground Rents in Philadelphia," 3-6;
30. Cadwalader, Practical Treatise, passim.
31. Allinson and Penrose, "Ground Rents in Philadelphia," 9.
32. Shippen to Hamilton, Lancaster, August 28, 1773, Edward Shippen Letterbook. The letter nicely summarizes twenty years of Shippen's ground rent collection practices regarding sterling exchange rates. For technical discussions of the reliability of ground rents, see Cadwalader, Practical Treatise, 157ff., 198-199;
33. Nicholson, Treatise on Real Estate, 65, 71;
34. Allinson and Penrose, "Ground Rents in Philadelphia," 10.
35. Nicholson, Treatise on Real Estate, 62, 77;
36. J. H. Wood, "Town Proprietors of Lancaster," 346-368.
37. Cadwalader, Practical Treatise, 62-63;
38. Doerflinger, Vigorous Spirit, 385;
39. Nicholson, Treatise on Real Estate, 65.
40. Nicholson, Treatise on Real Estate, Ibid., 70.
41. It is also not clear whether extinguishments had to be recorded. In the following example, from deedbook IC9:81, both types of contracts were mentioned in the deed, but the original indentures seem not to have been included: This Indenture made the Sixth day of January in the year of our Lord One Thousand Eight hundred and ten Between Isaac W. Morris of the City of Philadelphia Brewer and Sarah his wife of the one part and Edward Burd of the said City of the other part Witnesseth that the said Isaac W. Morris and Sarah his Wife for and in Consideration of the sum of four thousand one hundred and forty dollars lawfull money of the United States to them paid by the said Edward Burd at the time of the Execution hereof the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged have granted bargained sold assigned transferred and set over and by these presents do grant bargain sell assign transfer and set over unto the said Edward Burd his Heirs and assigns all that certain yearly rent or sum of two hundred and seventy six silver milled dollars lawful money of the United States of America Clear of Taxes Charged upon and half yearly Issuing out of all that Certain Lot or piece of ground Situate on the westwardly side of Dock Street. Pennsylvania Gazette, 16 Sept. 1789.
42. Much data about how wealthy Philadelphians invested in ground rents during the late antebellum period can be found in the Granville John Penn Estate Papers, HSP. Allinson and Penrose, "Ground Rents in Philadelphia," 17;
43. Cadwalader, Practical Treatise, 79 fn.
44. For Allen and Hamilton, see Craig W. Horle, Joseph S. Foster, and Jeffrey L. Scheib (eds.), Laumttking and Legislators: A Biographical Dictionary (Philadelphia, 1997), II.
45. For the Pembertons, see the Pemberton Papers, 42:137, HSP. For Willing and Morris, see Wright, "Thomas Willing (1731-1821): Philadelphia Financier and Forgotten Founding Father," Pennsylvania History, DXIII (1996), 525-560.
46. According to James L. Sturm, "The United States developed as a pre-eminently capitalist nation and the behavior of the investing classes mu[st] have been crucial" ("Investing in the United States, 1798-1893: Upper Wealth-Holders in a Market Economy," unpub. Ph.D. diss. [Univ. of Wisconsin, 1969]).
47. For use of the term capitalist, see Alexander Hamilton to Theophile Cazenove, Philadelphia, April 26, 1791, Papers of Alexander Hamilton (New York, 1979), 26:609:
48. Isaac Bronson to Elkanah Watson, New York, February 26, 1803, Papers of Elkanah Watson, New York State Library, Albany; Benjamin Davies, "The Bank Torpedo; or, Bank notes proved to be a robbery on the public, and the real cause of the distresses of the poor. By a friend to common honesty" (New York, 1810); New York Political Bulletin & Miscellaneous Repository, 29 Dec. 1810.
49. Officials completed 167 deedbooks between 1780 and 1820 - the final 75 books of series D, 33 of series EF, 30 of series IC, 23 of series MR, and the first 6 of series IW. At roughly 300 deeds per book, Pennsylvanians recorded approximately 50,100 deeds in the period.
50. Philadelphia Provincial Tax Rolls, 1767, Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania.
51. This treatment of single men with physical property but no adjusted assessment did not distort the data to any significant extent, because there were so few of them and because most taxpayers' adjusted assessments were merely a rounding off of their physical assessments.
52. The figure of 4,474 is generally considered accurate for heads of households in 1769. For discussions about the tricky question of colonial Philadelphia's population, see William S. Sachs, "The Business Outlook in the Northern Colonies, 1750-1775," unpub. Ph.D. diss. (Columbia Univ., 1957);
53. John K. Alexander, Render Them Submissive: Responses to Poverty in Philadelphia, 1760-1800 (Amherst, 1980), 26;
54. Gary B. Nash and Billy G. Smith, "The Population of Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia," XCIX, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (1975), 362-368;
55. Sharon W. Salinger and Charles Wetherell, "A Note on the Population of Pre-Revolutionary Philadelphia," CIX, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (1985), 369-386.
56. Allinson and Penrose, "Ground Rents in Philadelphia," 11, 16-17.
57. Note that artisans were skilled tradesmen and businessmen, not unskilled laborers. See Olton, Artisans for Independence; Howard Rock, Artisans of the New Republic: The Tradesmen of New York City in the Age of Jefferson (New York, 1984), 23.
58. Wright, "Thomas Willing," 525-560.
59. For an example of a typical contract, see note 13. Some have suggested that such transactions should be solved as a present value of annuities. Unfortunately, solving for a present or future value requires specifying a length of time or a number of periods, which is impossible for ground rents because they were perpetual. By the 18703, most newer ground rents in Pennsylvania were annual rents "payable semiannually." Cadwalader, Practical Treatise, 63.
60. John Penn to Thomas Penn, Sunbury, September 9, 1762, Penn Private Correspondence, HSP.
61. Granville John Penn Estate Papers, HSP; Nicholson, Treatise on Real Estate, 67.
62. Naomi Lamoreaux, Insider Lending: Banks, Personal Connection, and Economic Development in Industrial New England (New York, 1994);
63. Michael Merrill and Sean Wilentz (eds.), The Key of Liberty: The Life and Democratic Writings of \VHliam Manning, "A Laborer," 1747-1814 (Cambridge, 1993).
64. Horle, Foster, and Scheib (eds.), Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania.