Warren County Ohio Prices & Commercial Intercourse

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The History of Warren County, Ohio

Prices and Commercial Intercourse

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Transcription contributed by Martie Callihan 28 Oct 2004

Sources:
The History of Warren County Ohio
Part III, The History of Warren County
Chapter IV. Pioneer History
(Chicago, IL: W. H. Beers Co, 1882; reprint, Mt. Vernon, IN: Windmill Publications, 1992)
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243

In the year of the first settlement of this county, Cincinnati, the market and entrance-gate for the whole Miami Valley, was a little village, shown by a census of that year (1795) to contain a population of 500 persons, living in ninety-four log cabins and ten frame houses. A voyage to New Orleans was then made by flat-boats in a hundred days. For the journey eastward, the primitive pack-horses were beginning to be exchanged for the large and heavy old-time Pennsylvania wagons, with four and six horse bell teams. As a consequence of the difficulty attending commercial intercourse, every article the Miami farmer could produce was low; every foreign article he was compelled to buy was relatively high. Corn and oats were 10 or 12 cents a bushel, sometimes 8 cents; wheat, 30 or 40 cents; beef, $1.50 to $2, and pork, $1 to $2 per hundred. On the other hand, here are some of the prices for foreign articles our fathers paid at Cincinnati in 1799: Coffee, 50 cents per pound; tea, 80 cents; pins, 25 cents a paper; ginghams, 50 cents per yard; fine linen, $1 per yard; brown calico, 7 shillings 6 pence to 10 shillings; goslin green and gray cotton velvet, 7 shillings 6 pence to 11 shillings 6 pence; cassimere, $3 per yard; cotton stockings, 6 shillings to 15 shillings; bonnet ribbon, $1 per yard; "thin linen for flour-sifters," 10 shillings per yard; " small piece of ribbon for tying cues," 11 pence.

There was little encouragement for the farmer to raise more than he could use at home. In 1806, a traveler wrote that he had no conception how the farmers can maintain themselves with flour at $3.50 per barrel, and pork $2.50 per hundred. The merchants, however, he said, made an exorbitant profit. In four years, those who came from Baltimore or Philadelphia with goods obtained on credit had paid their debts and lived at their ease. There was little use for corn even for cattle or hogs, as the cattle found subsistence on the wild grasses of the woods, and hogs lived and fattened on the mast of hickory nuts, acorns and beech nuts.


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This page created 28 Oct 2004 and last updated 15 March, 2005
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