oup of four
plantations. The occurrence of tobacco houses in the inventory and of grain
crops alone in the advertisement shows a recent abandonment of the tobacco
staple; and the fact of Mercer's financial embarrassment[3] suggests, what
was common knowledge, that the plantation system was ill suited to grain
production as a central industry.

[Footnote 1: Robert Carter's plantation affairs are noted in Philip V.
Fithian, _Journal and Letters_ (Princeton, N.J., 1900); the Gunston Hall
estate is described in Kate M. Rowland, _Life of George Mason_ (New York,
1892), I, 98-102; many documents concerning Mt. Vernon are among the George
Washington MSS. in the Library of Congress, and Washington's letters,
1793-179, to his steward are printed in the Long Island Historical Society
_Memoirs_ v. 4; of James Mercer's establishments an inventory taken in 1771
is reproduced in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 249.]

[Footnote 2: _Virginia Gazette_ (Williamsburg, Va.), Oct. 22, 1767,
reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 133.]

[Footnote 3: S.M. Hamilton ed., _Letters to Washington_, IV, 286.]

The organization and routine of the large plantations on the James River in
the period of an agricultural renaissance are illustrated in the inventory
and work journal of Belmead, in Powhatan County, owned by Philip St. George
Cocke and superintended by S.P. Collier.[4] At the beginning of 1854 the
125 slaves were scheduled as follows: the domestic staff comprised a
butler, two waiters, four housemaids, a nurse, a laundress, a seamstress, a
dairy maid and a gardener; the field corps had eight plowmen, ten male and
twelve female hoe hands, two wagoners and four ox drivers, with two cooks
attached to its service; the stable and pasture staff embraced a carriage
driver, a hostler, a stable boy, a shepherd, a cowherd and a hog herd; in
outdoor crafts there were two carpenters and five stone masons; in indoor
industries a miller, two blacksmiths, two shoemakers, five women spinners
and a woman weaver; and in addition there were forty-five children, one
invalid, a nurse for the sick, and an old man and two old women hired off
the place, and finally Nancy for whom no age, value or classification is
given. The classified workers comprised none younger than sixteen years
except the stable boy of eleven, a waiter of twelve, and perhaps some of
the housemaids and spinners whose ages are not recorded. At the other
extreme there were apparently no sla