LEE SOLTOW
Inequality Amidst Abundance:
Land Ownership in Early
Nineteenth Century Ohio
As the great trans-Appalachian West
opened to settlement in the years
after the founding of the Republic,
Americans saw in the virtually
unlimited lands of the interior the
promise of a prosperous citizenry and a
healthy body politic. Most believed that
those rights declared self-evident
in the ringing words of the Declaration
of Independence must be firmly
grounded in a social fabric characterized
by the widespread and equitable
distribution of land. Thomas Jefferson
has long been recognized as the
most eloquent proponent of the yeoman
farmer ideal, but his erstwhile
rival John Adams also made the small
landholder the bedrock upon which
he thought a virtuous republic must
rest. As the second president of the
United States put it early in his
career, "The only possibility then of
preserving the balance of power on the
side of equal liberty and public
virtue is to make the acquisition of land
easy to every member of society; to
make a division of land into small
quantities, so that the multitude may be
possessed of landed estates."1
The American faith in widespread and
generous land ownership won
further endorsement from across the
Atlantic when in 1798 the pioneer
English economist Thomas Malthus
published his remarkable Essay on the
Principles of Population. The founder of the "dismal science" believed
that
there existed a tendency for populations
to expand more rapidly than did
the food supply, thus progressively
impoverishing the "redundant" portion
of the populace. The only checks to this
downward spiral were famine,
war, and pestilence which efficaciously,
if cruelly, reestablished the proper
relation of people to land.2 Echoing
Adams and Jefferson, Malthus argued
Lee Soltow is Professor of Economics at
Ohio University.
1. As quoted in William B. Scott, In
Pursuit of Happiness, American Conceptions of
Property from the Seventeenth to the
Twentieth Century (Bloomington, 1977),
41.
2. T. R. Malthus, An Essay on the
Principle of Population ora View of its Past and Present
Effects on Human Happiness (London, 1803), 190, 194. See also, Patricia James,
ed., The
Travel Diaries of Thomas Robert
Malthus (Cambridge, 1966).
134 OHIO HISTORY
that the distinctive "happiness of
the Americans depended much less upon
their peculiar degree of civilization,
than upon the peculiarity of their
situation, as new colonies, upon their
having a great plenty of fertile
uncultivated land."3
The settling of the vast Ohio Valley in
the first decades of the nineteenth
century seemed to provide a renewed
basis for such hopes and
expectations. In the first years of the
century Ohio emerged as the leading
area for new settlement in the world,
whose population quadrupled
between 1800 and 1810 and then rose
another 152 percent in ten years
more. With land prices cheap and a
population almost 99 percent rural, the
more than half million settlers who
flocked to Ohio by 1820 assuredly
represented that body of small
landowners that Thomas Jefferson
famously described as "the most
precious part of a state."4
But is this contemporary image an
accurate one? Did every adult male in
this overwhelmingly rural society hold
land? Were they a homogeneous
group with relative equality of acreage
and wealth? Was the average
landholding sufficient to support a wife
and family? Remarkably, few
historians have actually stopped to ask
these questions.5
Fortunately, some of these queries may
be answered by examination of
the 1810 inventory of all of Ohio's
properties or farms which is provided in
the manuscript tax duplicate for that
year. The tax inventory books
provide several crucial bits of
information, including the name of the
proprietor, the location or situs of the
land, residence county and often
township of the owner, the acreage, tax
value, and many other details
concerning the property. The tax value
is computed at $1.25 for first-class
land, $1.00 for second-class, and
sixty-five cents for third-class land, per
hundred acres.6
3. T. R. Malthus, Population: The
First essay (Ann Arbor, 1971), 119. Malthus was
interested in equality to the extent
that large holdings were underutilized and the wealthy
engaged in frivolous consumption. He
specifically recommended greater equality in later
writings. See his Principles of
Political Economy (London, 1920), Section VII and 433, 439.
4. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical
Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to
1970 (Washington, 1975), Series A195-209, 33; Jefferson's
thoughts on the importance of
landownership are most explicitly
expressed in his Notes on the State of Virginia, originally
written in 1782 and first published
privately three years later.
5. Two general sources of land holdings
are Benjamin Hibbard, A History of the Public
Land Policies (Madison, 1965) and Malcolm J. Rohrbough, The Land
Office Business (New
York, 1968). Specific description of
Ohio land settlement is found in William E. Peters Ohio
Lands and Their Subdivision (Athens, Ohio, 1918), C. E. Sherman, Original Land
Subdivisions, Vol. III, Ohio Cooperative Topographic Survey
(Columbus, Ohio Department
of Natural Resources, 1972 reprint);
Albion Dyer, First Ownership of Ohio Lands (New
England Historical and Genealogical
Register, Volumes LXIV and LXV, 1911). Listings of
original sources are given in National
Archives, Preliminary Inventory of the Land-Entry
Papers of the General Land Office, Preliminary Inventor, No. 22 (Washington, 1949), and
Auditor of the State of Ohio, Spine
Titles of Tract Books.
6. The tax inventory books, or
duplicates, are well preserved and stored in the Ohio
Inequality
Amidst Abundance 135
This
study involves 23,340 properties owned by 15,750 individuals,
sorted
by name of the proprietor and county of residence to determine the
number
of separate properties owned by various individuals.7 A count of
Table
1. The Distribution of the Number of
Properties Owned by
Residents
of Ohio in 1810
Number
of
properties
owned Number of
(class
limits) residents
100-127 3
50-99 6
20-49 44
10-19 64
5-9 270
3-4 672
2 1,769
1 12,922
0 7,590
23,340
Source:
The Tax Duplicae of 1810.
Historical
Society Library and are readily available on microfilm. A computer card was
punched
for each of some 26,000 entries by Gerald M. Petty; these were used in the
publication
of his book, Ohio 1810 Tax Duplicate, Arranged in a State- Wide Alphabetical
List
of Names of Taxpayers, with an Index of Names of Original Entries (Columbus, 1976).
He
has graciously given me these cards for an economic analysis from computer
tapes. John
Tysko
has written the computer collation programs.
7.
There are studies now being undertaken for various states, including complete
inventories
of land grants, but these surveys are not thought to be so exact an expression
of
ownership
as is the actual possession and payment of taxes. The procedure for assessing
and
gathering
the data for Ohio taxes was stated in very detailed fashion in the law of 1810.
There
were
strict provisions guaranteeing compliance, so there is every reason to think
that the
precious
books were unique. One qualification should be considered when examining our
tax
statistics;
they do not include sales of public (federal) lands in the five-year period
prior to
1810.
Estimates of these holdings are offered in an appendix to this article which
indicate that
the
number of these nontaxable properties, largely purchased on credit over a four
to five-year
time
span, were about 10 percent of the number of taxable properties. The essential
reason
that
public sales were not greater was that public land prices of $1.64-$2.00 were
higher than
those
offered by private individuals and state governments. The strategic importance
of our
tax
statistics is that we have the names of all Ohio owners and can determine the
total amount
of
their holdings in all of the townships and counties in the entire state for
each owner. See An
Act
Levying a Tax on Land, Laws of Ohio, Vol. 8, 315-342, Feb. 19, 1810.
136 OHIO
HISTORY
these properties gives the tally
presented in Table 1. The figures imply that
there were 7,590 farms which were either
rented or were not yet occupied.
At the same time, there were 34,730
males twenty-six and older living in the
state, as recorded by the Census of
1810; therefore, less than half were
owners of acreage. It appears that in
the initial stages of develop-
ment there were many who had not as yet
acquired land in Ohio, even
though it was readily available. It is
quite possible that it might have
been several years after arrival in the
state before a young man could
acquire land, and, with the great influx
of population each year, it is not
surprising that the ownership ratio was
but 45 percent.8 The ratio would
rise to 50 percent if we were to include
residents purchasing federal land on
credit in the five-year period prior to
1810. The proportion of the rural
population of Pennsylvania owning land
in 1798 has been estimated to
have been .50; that for Ohio was similar
in this respect, even though it was a
younger state.9 Perhaps the
main point is that ownership rates were much
higher in Ohio than they were in England
and Wales where, roughly, only
between 10 and 20 percent owned their
own farms in rural areas.10
Certainly, there were numerous examples
of the multiple holdings of the
great landowners of Ohio. The gentleman
owning the largest number of
individual pieces, 127, was Benjamin
Gilman of Washington County. He
was followed by William Lytle, of
Clermont County, with 123, and the
famous Duncan McArthur of Ross County,
with 111. These three, alone,
owned 1.5 percent of all properties and
2.3 percent of all land.11 The
inequitable distribution of Ohio's early
land is further substantiated by the
fact that the top 10 percent of the
property holders listed in Table 1 owned
one-third of all properties. But since
such properties can be either large or
small, one must turn to more exact
indexes to more precisely measure the
actual inequities.
The total resident acreage of all
properties owned by each individual in
the state in 1810 creates an array with
great extremes, from over 40,000
8. One calculation from a curved trend
line of Ohio's population (from 1800-1820) shows
the 1805 ratio was about 45 percent of
that in 1810.
9. This stems from a sample of every
tenth farm, sampled from the first federal tax in the
United States. An introduction to these
data is given in Lee Soltow, "America's First
Progressive Tax," National Tax
Journal (March, 1977), National Archives and Records
Service, United States Direct Tax of
1798; Tax Lists for the State of Pennsylvania, Microcopy
No. 372 (Washington, 1963), and Lee
Soltow, "Housing Characteristics on the Pennsylvania
Frontier: Mifflin County Dwelling Values
in 1798," forthcoming in Pennsylvania History.
10. F. M. L. Thompson, English Landed
Society in the Nineteenth Century (London,
1963), 116. A sample of 6,516 lines from
land tax books for England and Wales in 1798 shows
an ownership rate of between .12 and .20
in rural areas.
11. The number of properties owned, X,
forms an aesthetically pleasing pattern when
arrayed in a fashion suggested by V.
Pareto. Let LX be the rank of each owner (1,2, . . ..
15,750) when X is arrayed from highest
to lowest (127, 123, .., 1). The relationship is log
X=2.2403 .5625 log Lx, R2=.99.
Inequality Amidst Abundance 137
acres to a few cases of less than an acre. A selection
of these values given in
Table 2 is but a sampling of a process that has been
likened to a parade
of a few giants and many common people. The parade of
15,750 men
would be such that it would take but, say, twelve
seconds for the great
landowners to pass by in a parade that lasted four
hours. The leader of the
parade was Lucas Sullivant, with 51,459 acres; he would
have been
followed twelve seconds later by Nathaniel Massie at
18,047 acres. At this
point, only .03 percent of the men would have passed
by, but they owned
7.5 percent of the resident acreage! Levi Lucans would
appear after 100
Table 2. The
Top Twelve and Selected Others Among Ohio's 15,750 Resident
Property Owners in 1810, Arrayed by Acres Owned
Acres of Number of
land properties
Total tax paid, Residence
Rank
Name owned owned including
mills County
1 Sullivant,
Lucas 41,459 86 $340.582 Franklin
2 Lytle,
William 38,998 123 270.859 Clermont
3 McArthur,
Duncan 35,341 111 274.395 Ross
4 Kinsman,
John 33,986 49 220.908 Trumbull
5 Starr,
Joshua 30,909 12 200.910 Portage
6 Gilman,
Benjamin 22,128 127 144,574 Washington
7 Massie,
Henry 20,082 38 156.355 Ross
8 Galloway,
James Jun. 19,519 80 157.925 Green(e)
9 Austin,
Calvin 18,677 54 79.690 Trumbull
10 Kirtland,
Turhand 18,354 33 118.347 Trumbull
11 Austin,
Eliphr(?) 18,324 29 139.368 Geauga
12 Massie,
Nathaniel 18,047 33 133.370 Ross
100 Lucans,
Levi 3,090 3 21.103 Warren
200 Wherry,
David 1,856 3 12.060 Guernsey
300 Riddle,
John 1,391 4 13.910 Hamilton
400 Harris,
John 1,141 2 8.855 Montgomery
500 Wood,
Stephen 980 4 9.800 Hamilton
600 Irwin,
William 864 8 8.465 Ross
700 Test,
Zacheus 790 2 7.905 Columbiana
800 Longnecker,
Daniel 716 2 7.160 Columbiana
900 Kitchel,
Piercy 650 1 6.500 Warren
7,577 Zumalt,
Henry 150 1 1.500 Clermont
15,750 Spencer,
T. 0.3 1 .003 Butler
All owners
4,262,120.4 23,340 $35,977.524
138 OHIO HISTORY
seconds with acreage at 3,090, but it
would be two hours before our median
man, Henry Zumalt, would appear with his
150 acres.12
The first four men in this imaginary
parade have several characteristics in
common. The array is headed by the
above-mentioned Lucas Sullivant
who owned .1 percent of the state's aggregate acreage. He was forty-five
years old in 1810 and had been a surveyor
since his boyhood in Kentucky.
Sullivant penetrated into the wilderness
of Ohio at age twenty-two after
having been appointed as a deputy
surveyor; he located the town of
Franklinton on the Scioto in 1797. He
was considered the "central and
initial" man of Columbus, although
not its founder. His activities included
building the first bridge over the
Scioto between Franklinton and
Columbus and directing the first bank in
Columbus as its president.13
General William Lytle came to Ohio in
1780 at the age of ten, fought
Indians, and surveyed lands on the
northwest side of the Ohio River. His
father had 3,000 acres of land around
Lexington, Kentucky, obtained by
means of a grant for army service. He
was a member of the General
Assembly at Chillicothe and was
appointed a major general in 1808; in 1809
he built a beautiful house on an
eight-and-a-half acre tract that included
Lytle Park, Cincinnati.14
The third man on the list is the best
known, and the only one whose name
appears in the Dictionary of American
Biography. Duncan McArthur
learned surveying from Nathaniel Massie,
another high on the list, and
settled around Chillicothe. His fortune
was obtained by purchasing
Virginia land warrants from
Revolutionary War soldiers. "Unquestionably
he could drive a hard bargain and his
enemies charged that he was
unscrupulous." Ohio's future
governor was considered a very wealthy man
by 1804, and he was appointed a major
general in 1808, two years before the
date of our statistics.15
The fourth subject came to the
Connecticut Western Reserve in 1799 and
surveyed some of the lands that he had
obtained in drafts as one of the
proprietors of the Connecticut Land
Company. John Kinsman went back
to Connecticut to marry, and is reported
to have returned in style in 1804.
"No family in Trumbull County came
to the western home in so much
12. This interpretation is suggested by
J. Penn, "A Parade of Dwarfs (and a Few Giants),"
Wealth, Income and Inequality, ed. A.B. Atkinson (London, 1973).
13. E. O. Randall, "The Beginnings
of Columbus, Primeval and Capital," Ohio Magazine
(Columbus, 1907), 439-53; Jane D.
Sullivant, "Lucas Sullivant-His Personality and
Adventures," Ohio Archaeological
and History Society Publications (Columbus, 1928), 37,
177-189; History of Franklin and
Pickaway Counties, Ohio (Pickaway County Historical
Society, 1880), 579-80.
14. "The Personal Narrative of
William Lytle," Historical and Philosophical Society of
Ohio (1906) 1, 3-30; Francis Blake, "Controversy
between Gen. Wm. Lytle and James Gazlay,
Esq.," Pamphlet, 2nd ed.
(Cincinnati, 1822).
15. "Duncan McArthur," Dictionary
of American Biography, 1933, XI, 549-50.
Inequality
Amidst Abundance 139
comfort and
elegance. There was a two-horse wagon for the family, two
four-horse
wagons for the goods and supplies, an ox cart and riding
horses."16
He served as ajudge, and a brother-in-law was a major general.
Little
information was found for the fifth largest holder, Joshua Starr,
except for
his possible connection with Ephraim Starr, who had purchased
$17,415 in
land, at forty cents an acre, in 1795 from the Connecticut Land
Company. The
sixth gentleman, Benjamin Gilman, was prominent in
many
activities in Marietta and was a member of the Constitutional
Convention
in 1802. His father was an associate of The Ohio Company
who came to
Ohio in 1789, and later became a prominent judge in the
Northwest
Territory. 17 It becomes increasingly difficult to find information
concerning
the occupations, the early lives, and methods of accumulating
capital for
the seventh through twelfth gentlemen on our list.
Perhaps one
can make some generalizations from the information about
the first
four on the list of great landowners in Ohio. They all had had
experience
with surveying; in fact, three were surveyors by profession. All
had been in Ohio
for more than ten years and all had lived long enough to
reap the
benefits of increased population with its concomitant increases in
land values.
Their birth and death dates were:
age in
1810
Lucas
Sullivant 1765-1823 45
William
Lytle 1770-1831 40
Duncan
McArthur 1772-1839 38
John Kingman 1753-1813 57
There is
evidence that three of the four had parents with some wealth or
means.
Sullivant was left without parents, but had a patrimony in having
acquired a
liberal education; Lytle's father had land around Lexington;
Kinsman was
in some manner able to buy land in the East. Only McArthur
appears to
have come from a poor family.
A case study
of multiple-property holdings may be made from the
declarations
of Duncan McArthur. He owned property mainly in the
southwestern
and northwestern parts of the state as well as some in the
southeastern
part. A breakdown by county gives the following schedule:
16. Harriett
Upton, A Twentieth Century History of Trumbull County (Chicago, 1909),
516. See,
also, History of Trumbull and Mahoning Counties (Cleveland, 1882),
296-7.
17. Martin
Andrews, History of Marietta and Washington County (Chicago, 1902), 437,
498.
140 OHIO HISTORY
Number of Situs
properties County
32 Champaign
19 Ross
15 Fayette
15 Madison
11 Delaware
8 Pickaway
4 Clermont
2 Franklin
5 Others
111
These counties describe a chain which, in 1810, began
on the southern
border near Cincinnati, wound over past Columbus, and
then back into the
beginning counties which extended to the northern tip
of Ohio. Almost all
of McArthur's lands were in the Virginia Military
District. His holdings
were of all sizes: ten between 1,000 and 1,700 acres,
fifty-six between 160
and 999 acres, and forty-five of smaller sizes. Only a
quarter had his name
as the owner of original entry, which means that his
land was largely pur-
chased from others or perhaps offered in lieu of
surveyor fees.
The majority of Ohio's earliest political leaders were
men of wealth. The
first several senators, for example, had acreage
usually two or three times
the average of 271 acres.
1810 acres 1810
number
Birth-Death owned of properties
1. Thomas Worthington 1773-1827 5,443 11
2. John Smith 1735-1816 1,940 3
3. Edward Tiffin 1766-1825 720 3
4. Jonathan Meigs 1765-1825 1,630 10
5. Stanley Griswold 1763-1815 595 6
6. Alexander Campbell 1774-1857 376 3
7. Jeremiah Morrow 1771-1852 383 1
8. Joseph Ross ? 8,423 34
13. Jacob Burnett 1770-1853 21,089 15
Jacob Burnett is included since he owned the largest
single property in the
Inequality Amidst
Abundance
141
state in 1810. 18
Those who were delegates to the Constitutional Convention
in 1802 were
particularly cognizant of life, liberty, and property, so it is of
special interest to
note their holdings in 1810. There was a strange mixture
in the sizes of
holdings of the various delegates, but the median value of the
twenty-nine available
figures is 1,537 acres, a value more than ten times that
of property owners in
general. Ephraim Cutler, the one man to vote against
statehood in 1802, did
not have holdings conspicuously different from
those of other
members. It is true that the median for Washington County
was nearly double that
of all delegates, and this could partially explain the
reluctance of a
Washington County member to vote for immediate
statehood; he feared
the expenses of state government.19
Among ordinary
property holders geographical mobility was so high as
to make difficult the
extent of property holding over time. Of 188
individuals randomly
selected from the 1810 property sample, only eighty-
two were found in the
1820 census; thirty-three of these lived in the same
county and township,
twenty-five were in the same county but had no
township listed in
1810, and twelve had a change in township. A few moved
some distance within
the state. There were definitely sixty-one individuals
who could not be found
in the 1820 census, and forty-five others who were
doubtful for various
reasons. Thus, families were likely to come and go,
even when they owned
property.
Another aspect of
mobility was the extent of intercounty holdings. Eight
of every 100 (.08)
properties were located in counties other than the county
of residence of the
owner. Residents of some communities had large
holdings elsewhere,
such as at Marietta and Cincinnati. The 959 properties
held by Marietta
(town) residents had the following distributions:
Number County situs
715 Washington
108 Athens
103 Gallia
6 Delaware
6 Licking
4 Fairfield
4 Granville
3 Belmont
3 Trumbull
2 Portage
1 each in five other counties
959
18. William A. Taylor,
Ohio in Congress 1803-1901 (Columbus, 1909). Burnett owned
15,296 of his acres,
apparently, with a Mr. Findle.
19. Charles Galbreath,
History of Ohio, 5 vols. (Chicago, 1925), II, 34; History of
|
142 OHIO HISTORY One-third of Cincinnati township's 184 properties were located in
thirteen surrounding and more distant counties, some in northwestern Ohio. The share of acreage or tax payments can be examined most conveniently by inspecting Table 3. The great landowners did have a |
|
Table 3. The
Relative Shares of All Acreage or All Tax Value, Arrayed Above Certain Percentile Levels for the 15,570 Owners
in Ohio in 1810 The proportion
Acreage shares
Tax shares of owners above Acreage Proportion Amount
Proportion the acreage level, level, of all taxed, of all AC, or the tax AC acres above T
taxes above level, T AC T .0001 40,000 .015 $302. .014 .0002 35,000 .028 264. .026 .0005 19,500 .056 146. .049 .001 12,500 .087 99. .074 .002 7,200 .12 56. .10 .005 3,700 .17 28. .15 .01 2,100 .23 18. .20 .02 1,300 .29 11. .27 .05 725 .39 6.40 .38 .10 480 .50 4.10 .49 .20 300 .63 2.50 .63 .30 200 .72 1.83 .72 .40 160 .79 1.50 .79 .50 150 .85 1.16 .85 .60 106 .89 1.00 .90 .70 100 .93 .780 .93 .80 80 .96 .645 .96 .90 50 .98 .400 .99 1.00 .3 1.00 .003 1.00 Source: The
23,340 properties of the 15,750 owners. In the case of tax values, we have 15,719 cases and values are reported
in dollars, cents, and mills. The mean acreage was 271 and the mean tax was
$2.288. Summary measures of inequality are stated in a footnote. Washington County, Ohio, 1788-1801 (1881; rprt., Washington County Historical Society, 1976), 106-7; the acreage data are derived from this
author's computer programs of the 1810 tax declarations. |
Inequality Amidst Abundance 143
sizable proportion of the total since
the top 1 percent (157 men) above 2,100
acres had 23 percent of all acres (line
seven of Table 3). The top 10 percent
(1,575 men), each with 480 or more
acres, owned 50 percent of all acres.
Thus, one man in each ten owners in
every county or township was
likely to own about half of the resident
land. It is not far from the truth
to say that one man in each one hundred
owned a quarter of the resident
land. Proportions were a little less in
terms of the value of land, since the
rich and the very rich were more likely
to own third-class land. This can be
seen from the tax shares in the last
column of Table 3.20
Inequality of wealth characterized Ohio
land ownership patterns, but the
acreage amount of the 90 percent with
less than 480 acres was still very
adequate, certainly by seacoast or European standards. Perhaps
the
descriptive words bountiful or
munificent are more appropriate in
depicting an economy in which the median
owner had 150 acres of land.
Inequality becomes an important issue
only if those below the median do
not have an adequate amount of land to
sustain a culturally acceptable
standard of living. In this case, forty
acres might have been thought to be
the most that anyone could cultivate
with horse and plow. Almost all
owners, except those in more urban
areas, held this minimum amount. (If
the degree of relative inequality
existing in Ohio prevailed in a land with
one-tenth, or one-twentieth, or possibly
even one-hundredth of the acreage
owned by Ohioans, then the situation
might have brought demands by
"levellers" for
redistribution, as in nineteenth century Ireland or
contemporary Latin America.)
Ownership of land gives only a partial
answer to the total question of
allocating land resources among
inhabitants. The question of land in use is
of more vital importance in making a living,
even if there are many who pay
rent or are on shares. Suppose farms are
of relatively equal size; then there
is no group which can be called
redundant in the Malthusian sense. In
England or Ireland there were families
with less than five or even less than
two acres who were living in a deprived
or even destitute condition, but this
was hardly the case in Ohio.
A tally of the number of farms assessed
from the tax-duplicate books
gives the frequency classes in Table 4.
Property is obviously in a wide range,
varying between the expanse of 14,240
acres of J. and F. Burnett of
Cincinnati Township in Hamilton County
to the .3 acres of Thomas
Spencer in Butler County. The dozen
holdings of less than one acre do not
constitute farms, nor do the fifty-nine
between one and 1.9 acres; but these
are miniscule from the standpoint of the
number of cases in the total
picture. Certainly, there is no evidence
of individuals having to scratch out
20. The Gini coefficient of inequality,
a measure of relative dispersion, was .580 for the
15,750 acreage amounts and .579 for the
15,719 tax values.
144
OHI0 HISTORY
a living on
inadequate farms. Less than two percent of the properties were
under five
acres in size.
Table 4. The Number of Taxable Properties or Farms in Ohio in
1810,
Classified by
Acreage Size
Number of
acres Frequency
10,000-14,999 2
5,000-9,999 11
2,000-4,999 62
1,000-1,999 251
500-999 1,156
200-499 4,647
100-199 9,809
50-99 4,277
20-49 1,676
10-19 550
5-9 483
2-4 342
1-1.9 59
0-.9 17
23,340
Source: The entries in the tax books listing acreage. The mean
size was
183; measures
of relative dispersion are given in a footnote. The number of
properties
being purchased on credit from the federal government from
1805-1809,
perhaps 2,300 in number, is not included.
This contrasts
sharply to the situation in many European regions. Over
10 percent of
the plots were under five acres in the 154 farms of Gorran
Parish in
rural Cornwall in 1798, and the average acreage of all farms was
but 22.9,
one-eighth of the 183-acre average of the properties in Ohio in
1810. A sample
of 1,082 farms in Ballyritt Barony in King's County, west of
Dublin, in
1821 shows 45 percent of the farms to have been less than five
acres, and
average size was fifteen acres - one-twelfth of that in Ohio.21
The enormity
of some of the individual holdings in Ohio would have
exceeded the
wildest dreams of a resident of Ballyritt or Cornwall. A list of
21. Gorran
data gathered from the volumes of the land-tax books of 1798 at the British
Public Records
Office, Kew; the parish was the only one to record acres as well as tax values
of
any area in
England and Wales. The Ballyritt data are a sample drawn from the Irish Census
for 1821, a
census which is extant in fragmentary form for only five counties, at best.
Inequality Amidst Abundance 145
the top half-dozen demonstrates how large the owned properties were, and
on which taxes were paid.
Residence
Acres Name of owner of owner
14,240 Burnett, J., &
Findle Hamilton
10,000 Ludlow, Isaac Heir Hamilton
9,709 Kinsman, John Trumbull
7,733 Starr, Joshua Portage
7,686 Starr, Joshua Portage
6,295 Kirtland, Turhand Trumbull
The thirteen farms above 5,000 acres were located as follows:
Residence Situs of
of owner property
Hamilton 2 2
Cuyahoga 0 3
Geauga 1 2
Portage 6 3
Trumbull 4 3
13 13
The eleven not situated in Hamilton County were located, surprisingly,
in
northeastern Ohio. The acreage in the upper tail of the distribution is
much
larger than could have been farmed without hundreds of farm laborers or
leaseholders and must be considered as expanses that would be later
subdivided into many parcels.
The settlement of the state was not uniform, and, of course, this
affected
the patterns of farm size. One can picture the region as it developed
from
one or a few settlers to one of many ranges and townships. Areas of
recent
settlement away from the Ohio River had the larger farms, for plentiful
land was still available there. Farms in the southeast were generally
smaller. These sectional differences can be demonstrated if we divide
the
state into quadrants at latitude 40 (Columbus and Franklin County and
north) and longitude 82.5 (Lancaster and Fairfield County and east).
Average acreage
of property
West East
North 247 193
South 184 131
146 OHIO HISTORY
The
northwest had properties almost twice the size of those in the
southeast;
these were, respectively, the areas of last and first settlement in
the state.
A further
distinction can be made to measure settlement history within
each region
by studying the date of formation of each particular county.
Average
acreage
of property
West East
1789-1800
North - 172
South 183 128
1801-1810
North 247 206
South 185 146
Those
organized after 1800 had about 20 percent more acreage than those
formed a
decade earlier. The southwest was an exception.22 These statistics
illustrate
the fact that farm size had already begun to diminish by 1810, but
that average
levels were still very handsome.23 The relative distribution of
land in use
was quite equal and similar in each section of the state in spite of
the fact
that there were a dozen or so very large parcels.24 There was no
reason to
believe that further settlement would alter the relative
distribution
of land in use.
Two
conclusions are apparent from this study of Ohio landholding early
in the
nineteenth century. First, landowning was widespread and
substantial.
The average owner held 271 acres, and although this value was
influenced
by the great holdings of the few, still the median, or middle,
owner had
150 acres, and only 1 or 2 percent had less than forty. Thus land
in use was
distributed in relatively large parcels, with no real evidence of
anyone's
having less than five acres. In contrast to their European
22.
Classifications have been made by county of residence. Classification by county
of situs
shows a 33
percent differential between counties formed before and after 1800.
23. A more
thorough analysis would encompass a study of distribution within each region,
the shares
of the rich and of the relatively poor among both owners and users of land. Perhaps
it is
sufficient here to state that relative inequality, the shares of the top 10
percent and the
lowest 10
percent, did not vary much from section to section in the state. The Gini
coefficient
of acreage
amounts for the 23,340 properties of Table 4 was .494; for the regions it was
.54 in
the
southeast, and .49 in the other three sections.
24. For an
analysis of the relative distribution of land values in Norway, Pennsylvania,
and
Ohio, see
Lee Soltow, "The Distribution of Real Estate Among Norwegian Farmers in
1802,"
a manuscript
accepted for publication in Historisk Tidskrift, a Norwegian historical
journal.
The Gini
coefficient of Ohio acres was .580, considering 15,750 owners, and .494,
considering
23,340
properties (usufruct).
Inequality Amidst Abundance 147
counterparts, Ohio yeoman were
incomparably better off, for in many
regions of England and Ireland 20 to 40
percent of the farmers had less than
five acres each.
Second, despite the substantial holdings
of the average farmer, the total
land was inequitably distributed from
the very first stages of settlement. At
the top of the land scale stood about a
dozen great landowners who
monopolized many thousands of acres, and
not coincidentally held many
of the reins of political power and
social prestige in the new state. At the
bottom of the social ladder were a large
body of landless individuals. The
number of owners accounted for only
45-50 percent of the male laborers
twenty-six years and older in 1810, and
the number of properties accounted
for only 67-72 percent of this adult
labor force. The ownership rate at this
early stage of the state's economic
development stood no larger than it was
to become forty years later.25
25. Lee Soltow, Men and Wealth in the
United States, 1850-1870 (New Haven, 1975), 41.
The proportion holding real estate was .45 for men
twenty and older living in Ohio in 1850.
148
OHIO HISTORY
APPENDIX
Nontaxable
Purchases of Federal Lands
The
ordinance of 1802 which set forth the procedures for qualifying for
statehood
contained a provision that land sold by Congress should be
exempt
from any tax laid by a state, county, or township for a period of five
years
from the date of sale.26 Would our statistics have been altered
materially
had these sales been included? The answer is no. The majority of
purchases
were made from private and state or military lands. In any case,
one
must account in some fashion for the numbers of properties purchased,
predominantly
by credit, in the period from 1805 to 1809, even though it is
difficult
to ascertain exact counts. The abstract books of entry and payment
for
each of Ohio's land districts housed in the National Archives are the
best
source of information, although they lack some essential details
concerning
dates of purchase and number of payments made by each
purchaser.
A
count of the number of receipts of the various land offices is given in
Table
5. This includes the quarterly payments made forty days after the sale
and
those at the end of the second, third, and fourth years; it also contains
some
fifth, sixth, and other payments on account.
Table
5. The Total Number of Entries or
Partial Payments in the Six
Land
Offices in Ohio in 1809
Number,
excluding
Number
of nonresidents and
receipts multiple properties
Cincinnati 1,578 1,184
Chillicothe 866 787
Steubenville 965 422
Marietta 44 44
Zanesville 535a 314
Canton 100 57
4,088 2,808
a
Estimated from 1807 data
Source:
The Land Abstract books, Federal Records
Office,
Suitland, Md.
26.
The Ordinance of 1802, Chap. 300, (XL), April 30, 1802, Section 7. The issue of
tax
Inequality Amidst Abundance 149
The 4,088 cases constitute a maximum
estimate of the number of farms
being purchased on credit in the year
prior to our tax data and should
generally include all lands purchased
after December 31, 1804, since very
few were obtained in less than a
four-year period.
Several exclusions should be made to
determine either the number of
properties owned by residents or the
number which were occupied. A
sampling procedure devised for each
abstract book considered the
residence of the individual and whether
or not he was buying two or more
properties at the same time. Excluding
purchases of individuals whose
listed residence was a state other than
Ohio and multiple properties listed in
the book (the 2nd, 3rd, . . , nth
property of one individual), one obtains
the figures in the second column of the
table. This new total of 2,808 is, in
itself, a maximum number since it is not
known if the majority of these
properties were actually occupied in any
meaningful way.
The land abstract for the Cincinnati
district was unique in the sense that
the original selling date and the number
of the payment were stated for each
entry. An analysis of every twentieth
line of the 1,820 entries for 1810
indicates that but 9 percent were
initial fees not constituting the first
payment. Another 14 percent were
payments being made on purchases
extending beyond the five-year limit.
There were also many small payments
"on account" which the
register and receiver were directed to receive
beginning in 1805.27
It is felt that the number of occupied
properties being purchased on
credit from the federal government by
residents of the state was perhaps
2,300, or roughly 10 percent of the
number presented in the tax statistics of
this paper. Corroborating evidence is
obtained from the total acreage
statistics stated for all land sold each
year in each office from 1800-1811 in
the American State Papers. The
amount sold decreased very substantially
each year from 1805 to 1809 in each of
Ohio's land offices (except for the
small amounts in Marietta).28 Only
98,900 acres were reported as sold in
Ohio in 1809, an amount implying 618
properties if the average size was 160
acres. Persons from other states
purchased an important proportion of
these, particularly in the Steubenville
and Canton areas. One can conclude
that the nontaxable purchases of federal
lands would not alter in any
significant way the configurations
developed in this paper. They should not
exemption is discussed in Hibbard, History
of Land Policies, Chapter 5. Land offices are
described in William E. Peters, Ohio
Lands and Their History (Athens, Ohio, 1930).
27. Rohrbough, The Land Office
Business, 31.
28. American State Papers, Public
Lands, Vol. 1 (1812), 444; Hibbard, History of Land
Policies, 88.
150
OHIO HISTORY
be
part of the ownership distributions in any case, since purchasers might
not
have patents for several years and perhaps might never have completed
their
final payments.29
Acreage of Delegates to the Constitution
Convention of October and November, 1802
Number
of Number of
Delegate properties acres
County in
1810 in 1810
Adams Joseph Darlington 25 2,318
Israel
Donalson 8 807
Thomas
Kirker 8 1,537
Belmont James Caldwell 4 476
Elijah
Woods 1 320
Philip
Gatch 15 5,125
James
Sargeant 1 366
Fairfield Henry Abrams 2 762
Emanuel
Carpenter 3 850
Hamilton John W. Browne 2 316
Charles
Willing Byrd 1 600
Francis
Dunlavy 4 562
William
Goforth ?
John
Kitchel 1 400
Jeremiah
Morrow 1 383
John
Paul 3 1,830
John
Reily ?
John
Smith 13 3,140
John
Wilson ?
Jefferson Rudolph Bair 4 785
George
Humphrey 7 809
John
Milligan 1 110
Nathan
Updergraff 3 1,586
Bazaleel
Wells 19 5,402
Ross Michael Baldwin ?
James
Grubb ?
Nathaniel
Massie 33 18,047
29.
Perhaps the essential reason that sales were so minimal was that non-federal
land prices
were
substantially lower than the $1.64-$2.00 of the federal government, and credit
was often
on
easier terms. A Congressman from Kentucky in 1810 opined that no Congressman
purchasing
land ever bought it from the federal government. See Hibbard, History of
Land
Policies, 77-78.
Inequality
Amidst Abundance
151
Thomas
Worthington 11 5,443
Trumbull David Abbot 3 2,157
Samuel
Huntington 9 2,954
Washington Ephraim Cutler 19 2,498
Benjamin
Ives Gilman 127 22,128
John
McIntire 10 2,405
Rufus Putnam 33 3,120
Information
on acreage was either not available or doubtful in
six cases.
LEE SOLTOW
Inequality Amidst Abundance:
Land Ownership in Early
Nineteenth Century Ohio
As the great trans-Appalachian West
opened to settlement in the years
after the founding of the Republic,
Americans saw in the virtually
unlimited lands of the interior the
promise of a prosperous citizenry and a
healthy body politic. Most believed that
those rights declared self-evident
in the ringing words of the Declaration
of Independence must be firmly
grounded in a social fabric characterized
by the widespread and equitable
distribution of land. Thomas Jefferson
has long been recognized as the
most eloquent proponent of the yeoman
farmer ideal, but his erstwhile
rival John Adams also made the small
landholder the bedrock upon which
he thought a virtuous republic must
rest. As the second president of the
United States put it early in his
career, "The only possibility then of
preserving the balance of power on the
side of equal liberty and public
virtue is to make the acquisition of land
easy to every member of society; to
make a division of land into small
quantities, so that the multitude may be
possessed of landed estates."1
The American faith in widespread and
generous land ownership won
further endorsement from across the
Atlantic when in 1798 the pioneer
English economist Thomas Malthus
published his remarkable Essay on the
Principles of Population. The founder of the "dismal science" believed
that
there existed a tendency for populations
to expand more rapidly than did
the food supply, thus progressively
impoverishing the "redundant" portion
of the populace. The only checks to this
downward spiral were famine,
war, and pestilence which efficaciously,
if cruelly, reestablished the proper
relation of people to land.2 Echoing
Adams and Jefferson, Malthus argued
Lee Soltow is Professor of Economics at
Ohio University.
1. As quoted in William B. Scott, In
Pursuit of Happiness, American Conceptions of
Property from the Seventeenth to the
Twentieth Century (Bloomington, 1977),
41.
2. T. R. Malthus, An Essay on the
Principle of Population ora View of its Past and Present
Effects on Human Happiness (London, 1803), 190, 194. See also, Patricia James,
ed., The
Travel Diaries of Thomas Robert
Malthus (Cambridge, 1966).