• This community needs YOUR help today. We rely 100% on Supporting Memberships to fund our efforts. With the ever increasing fees of everything, we need help. We need more Supporting Members, today. Please invest back into this community. I will ship a few decals too in addition to all the account perks you get.



    Sign up here: https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/account/upgrades

Price of powder in 18th century

Muzzleloading Forum

Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Joined
Nov 30, 2015
Messages
1,854
Reaction score
140
Location
Georgia
Anybody got an ideas? In America, I mean. I'm trying to figure out how accessible it would have been and at what cost. Also, lead. I know lead was pretty common in certain areas, but transporting it around must have cost a lot.
 
I have never found any pricing information on powder or lead except this bargaining statement from the Creek Indians in South Carolina 1753.

The Pennsylvania Gazette
August 30, 1753
The further Conference between his Excellency JAMES GLEN, Esq; Governor of South Carolina, and Malatchi and other Headmen of the Creek Indians....

“I am now to say something to your Excellency, which I hope you will assent to; the King has spoke what was necessary upon other Heads, and what I am to speak is without Direction of any Head men; it flows chiefly from myself, being a Head Warrior, and the rest of the Head Warriors here present, that is, that the Trade should be lower; we want a Match Coat for 6 lb. Leather, a Gun for 14 lb. which is now 16. 50 Bullets for 1 lb. 2 double Handfuls of Powder for one Skin, 20 Flints for 1 lb. a Check Shirt for 3 lb. now it is 4 Callicoes at the same Rate; a Blanket 6 lb. for two Yards, a Man’s Flap 1 lb. a Hoe 3 lb. a Pair Silver Bobs 1 lb. a Belt 1 lb. 2 Knives for 1 lb. a Pair of Shoes at 3 lb. which used to be 4 lb. a Pair of Scissars 1 lb. a Keg of Rum 25 lb. Leather.”

Spence
 
Morgan's ledger records a transaction in 1768 of 22 pounds of powder for 7/6 (pounds/shillings) or 8/5/0 Pennsylvania currency, and elsewhere a pound of powder for one buckskin.*

For the first transaction, a bit of math gets me a figure of just under 6 shillings eight-pence per pound of powder, which seems a lot higher the second since I believe the market price for a half-dressed buckskin was around 0/2/6. Perhaps the hide in question had been fully braintanned instead of half-dressed (scraped clean of flesh and hair, but not treated with oil or smoked).

*taken from Mark Baker's M.S. thesis "Sons of a Trackless Forest," pages 87 and 105. This is not the book of the same title.
 
St. Louis sold it in town for ten cents a pound. The same as a pound of salt.
In 1812 a Private was paid a dime a day :hmm: a brand new JS Hawken was about twentyfive dollars.
Today you can get a nice copy for about twentyfive hundred.
So... if we times prices by a factor of one hundred that made powder (and salt) ten dollars a pound. Of corse there isn’t a 1:1 comparison in money. Although five hundred dollars a year was good wages. Enough to by five thousand pounds of powder.
Most of us don’t make twohundred thousand a year today.
 
:eek:ff This thread is interesting enough it made me look up the currency notations you are using. EG 1/13/14 would be (if I am not mistaken) 1 pound 13 shillings and 14 pence.
I had no idea before now they didn't use the decimal point or period to separate the levels. (Or is that a modern notation of old currency?)
 
I had to go look at some books. I managed to locate a picture of a 1770s British ledger and it used a x.x.x template. Looking through the transcriptions in DeWitt Bailey's book on British rifles, I see that he uses both x.x.x and x/x/x templates, both in his transcriptions of original documents (one has both templates in the same document!) and in his own text. So, I think either way is correct, both historically and now to refer to pre-decimalization British currency. Nowadays they have a new system, of course.

Incidentally, in one American ledger the shop owner just had vertical lines to form columns for pounds, shillings, and pence, and just filled in the numbers in the appropriate column. I wouldn't be surprised to find that that was a common way of doing things and that modern authors aren't always consistent when transcribing the figures into modern print.
 
Shillings were equal to 12 pence. I believe the number 12 was used, like in dozens, over tens because 12 has three divisors (2, 3, 4, 6) and ten has only two, 2 and 5. Easier to divide into groups, like 12 donuts for three people.
 
Twelve has been a significant number in Germanic languages from time immemorial. Notice that we have a specific word for eleven and twelve, and only afterwards go to "three-and-ten," "four-and-ten?" I think the 12 pence to a pound is probably a reflection of this, as much as any utilitarian reason.

One of the reasons why I dislike the metric system is because it loses the base 12 way of thinking.

Mooman,

I suspect that the reason has to do with the introduction of the double eagle the mid-19th century. Prior to that the biggest coin in circulation was the eagle, a 10 dollar gold coin. I guess it just made more sense to double the existing largest coin when adding a new coin, rather than make it a quarter of a denomination which I don't believe existed at the time.
 
Elnathan said:
One of the reasons why I dislike the metric system is because it loses the base 12 way of thinking.
Base-12 is not very efficient.
In addition to a couple of 3rd-world nations, the USA just can't seem to get with the program...
 
Black Hand said:
Elnathan said:
One of the reasons why I dislike the metric system is because it loses the base 12 way of thinking.
Base-12 is not very efficient.
In addition to a couple of 3rd-world nations, the USA just can't seem to get with the program...

You will pry my yardstick from my cold, dead hands.
 
12, there are twelve full moons in a year(about) and twelve signs of the zodiac. There are seven visable planets. In the first definition of planet, an object that wanders against the background fixed stars. So sun,moon Mecury, Venus, Mars,Jupiter and Saturn
So we have twelve tribes of Israel, twelve tablets of Roman law, twelve people on a jury.
The difference between seven and twelve is five, the number of your fingers. Twelve times five is sixty, the heart beats of a healthy resting heart in a minute. And sixty times sixty is an hour, one twelfth of daylight or night time at the equinox. And three is the smallest stable number, you can move in one of four directions and four plus three is seven, four times three is twelve.
The only thing that makes the decimal easier or more worksbal is because we grew up with it in much of our life. The Mesopotamians worked out geometry and did some complex building with a base twelve.
 
Back
Top