What was $12 worth in 1814?

Anyone who studies the past soon comes up against the question of what the money amounts mentioned really meant. There are a number of sites that will "tell" us, but translating 200-year-old dollar values into today's economy is a very difficult and dubious task. I proposed some alternatives in a blog post last year and recommended the site Measuring Worth if you're determined to try to make such a statement.

But for several reasons it seemed more reasonable to compare apples to apples and describe purchases from back then that we might be able to grasp in in-kind terms today.

So when I wanted to know what it meant for a War of 1812 soldier to be paid about $12 for a couple months' service (two separate hitches), I went looking. I found that that in 1812 in near-frontier Cincinnati that amount of money would have bought

"more than 250 pounds of beef.¹ In Jefferson County [New York] some 20 years later it would have bought about 100 pounds of maple sugar.^2"

 

1 Thomas Senior Berry, Western Prices Before 1861: A Study of the Cincinnati Market (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1943), Table 23, “Median Annual Prices of Fourteen Leading Commodities in the Ohio Valley, 1786-1817,” pp. 568-69; digital images, Food Timeline (http://www.foodtimelines.org/prices1786-1817.pdf : accessed 9 April 2013).

2 Henry H. Lyman, “Sugar-Making,” in Memories of the Old Homestead: A Story about Lorraine, NY (1900; reprint, Historical Association of South Jefferson, 1999), 23rd paragraph; digital image, Adams, New York History and Genealogy (http://www.adamsny.net/lyman.html : accessed 9 April 2013).

These were the most intuitive comparisons I could find on short order. I was reminded that prices were very local back then, and how few things are directly comparable. (I hardly ever have occasion to buy that much beef or maple sugar.) If others have found useful sources for this purpose I'd love to hear about them.



Harold Henderson, "What was $12 worth in 1814?," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 22 May 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]  

A New Year of Ohio Civil War Genealogy

The first quarter 2009 issue of the Ohio Civil War Genealogy Journal starts off with the top three finishers in the Civil War division of OGS's 2008 writing contest:

"Had They Stood Their Ground, We Would Have Cleaned Them Out: Ohioans in the Battle of Lewisburg in Western Virginia," by Jan Rader*

"Isaac Lyle of the 53rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry and His Brothers," by Jean M. Hoffman*

"When Frank Came Marching Home: Frank Elliott, 135th OVI," by Harold Henderson*

"Lincoln's Brother-in-Law in Fayette County?" by Mike Williams and Washington Senior High Research History Class

"Update: Significance of the Dove on Lewis Tuttle's Gravestone at Andersonville GA," by Kevin Frye and Mary Metzinger Nunneley

"DVD Announcement: Andersonville: View Behind the Valor, A Narrated Photographic Tour of the Prison Grounds and National Cemetery," by Kevin Frye

"Ask the Experts"

"Commodity Price Indexes, 1860 to Present," by Dan Reigle -- applying John J. McCusker's How Much Is That In Real Money? A Historical Commodity Price Index to Civil War pay figures.

"Isaac Shumaker Diary for 1863-1865, 81st OVI, Galion, Ohio," by Mike Hocker

"Book Review: The Fighting McCooks by Charles & Barbara Whalen," by Dan Reigle

"John William Eckert and his Red Badge of Courage," by Eric Johnson

"1883 Census of Pensioners, Erie County, Ohio," comp. Michael Elliott

*footnoted