NORTHUMBERLAND COUNTY'S POPULATION: TRENDS AND PATTERNS
published
in Bulletin of the Northumberland County Historical Society, 33 (1996)
At its most basic, the history of Northumberland County is the
relationship between a territorial unit and its inhabitants. That
history may be told in a variety of ways: how people arranged themselves
across the landscape, how they sought to extract a livelihood from soil
and sea, how they re-shaped their natural environment, and so on. Yet
another way of understanding this human geography is to trace the
changing number of inhabitants that, over time, lived on the county's
same 192 square miles. Did Northumberland's population grow steadily
during the colonial period and then level off, or did it rise and fall?
If the latter, what explains the fluctuation? This article first
presents the broad picture of Northumberland's population dynamics over
the past 350 years. It then looks in more detail at the shifts during
the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Who Got
Counted: People or Workers?
Unfortunately for our purposes, early
American governments saw no compelling reason to count people. It was
the federal constitution of 1787 that first established the principle of
allocating of seats in the House of Representatives according to the
population of the states. From 1790 on, therefore, we may use federal
decennial census to track the number of Northumberlanders. Before 1790,
however, there were only three years (1699, 1701, and 1782) for which we
have figures for the county population.
There is, however, another
count that local governments in Virginia made before and after
Independence for the purpose of assessing state and county taxes. This
was the enumeration of "tithables," or able-bodied workers. Every
spring, local notables would go through the county, counting free males
over 21 years of age; slaves, both male and female over 16 years of age;
and free males from 17 to 21 years of age. It was on the basis of these
three components that the county tax was levied. Left out of the count
were all free women, free males below sixteen, all slaves under sixteen,
and other special social categories.[1]
The advantage of the
tithable count is that it was done every year, and so allows us to chart
population in some detail. The obvious disadvantage is that it does not
count people. To rectify this limitation, historians have sought to
derive the ratio of tithables to individuals. For seventeenth century
Virginia, it appears that there were somewhere over two people for every
tithable. During the eighteenth century, as black slaves became an
increasing large share the population, the rule of thumb is about three
people for every tithable. The ratios for Northumberland for the first
three years we have population figures were 1.86-to-1 for 1699,
2.86-to-1 in 1782, and 3.10-to-1 in 1790.[2]
Macro-trends in
Population
Beginning with the broad trends, Table I presents the
available population counts from 1699 to the present. The county grew
from a minimal base at its founding to 2,019 people at the end of the
seventeenth century. After 1700, as planters relied more and more on
black slaves as their labor force, the population grew to as high as
9,000 in 1790 at the time of the first federal census. For the next five
decades, it fluctuated around 8,000 but then dropped several hundreds
before the Civil War. The 1870 number was the lowest in more than a
century, for understandable reasons, but the figures for 1880 and 1890
returned to the norm of the early eighteenth century. Then, some time
after 1900, the county's population broke the 10,000 mark for the first
time and climbed to 11,518 in 1920. This unprecedented development was
probably the result of a decline in the death rate brought about by
success in combating infectious diseases. Then, the number experienced
significant two drops after 1930, no doubt a function of the rural-urban
migration common throughout the South. Northumberland's population did
not begin to rebound until 1980, but my the year 2000 the extended
suburbanization of the greater Washington metropolitan area had reached
the county.
TABLE I: POPULATON OF NORTHUMBERLAND COUNTY, 1699-2000
Year Population Year Population
1699 2019 1890 7885
1782 7734
1900 9846
1790 9013 1910 10777
1800 7803 1920 11518
1810 8308
1930 11081
1820 8016 1940 10463
1830 7953 1950 10012
1840 7918
1960 10185
1850 7336 1970 9239
1860 7531 1980 9828
1870 6863
1990 10524
1880 7929 2000 12259
SOURCES: 1699: Morgan, American
Slavery, American Freedom, 412-3; 1782: William Palmer, et al., eds.,
Calendar of Virginia State Papers, vol. 3 (Richmond, 1875), 412;
1790-1980: John Andriot, comp. and ed., Population Abstract of the
United States, vol. 1 (McLean, VA: Andriot Associates, 1983), 824; 1990:
Virginia Statistical Abstract, 1994-1995 Edition (Charlottesville, VA:
University of Virginia Center for Public Service, 1994), 577.
It is
worth noting that the white and black populations in Northumberland
County were virtually equal for much of the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. From 1782, through 1840, the numbers of the two
groups differed by no more than two hundred persons (free blacks
constituted about one-sixth of the county's black population.) Then, at
mid-century, in a development that deserves to be studied, the white
share of the population dropped -- to 41.7 percent in 1850 and 38.3
percent in 1860. Because the number of blacks remained fairly constant,
fluctuating between around 4,000 and 4,600 from 1790 to 1860, the shift
in the racial balance must reflect an out-migration of poor whites after
1840.[4]
From the patterns of the last two centuries, we may
therefore conclude that the normal population of Northumberland County
before the onset of industrialization and modern medicine was around
8,000 (41.6 persons per square mile). Thereafter, the norm was about
10,000 (52.1 persons per square mile) until a 16.5 percent increase
during the last decade of the twentieth century.
Micro-trends:
the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries
If we can use the
decade-by-decade numbers to trace the broad human geography of the
county, the annual tithable figures can serve as a window on an
important dimension of Northumberland's social history. Table II
presents those numbers from 1750 to 1814, with adjustments for the
1780s, and the rate of change from year to year:
TABLE II: TITHABLES
IN NORTHUMBERLAND COUNTY, 1751-1814 (ADJUSTED) AND ANNUAL PERCENTAGE
RATE OF CHANGE
Year Tithables % change Year Tithables % change Year
Tithables % change
1749-50 2208 1770-71 2922 +4.6 1793-94 2878 +1.2
1750-51 2164 -1.9 1771-72 2939 +0.6 1794-95 2813 -3.0
1751-52 2173
+0.4 1772-73 3075 +3.5 1795-96 2748 -2.3
1752-53 2328 +7.1 1774-75
3034 -1.3 1796-97 2744 -0.1
1753-54 2421 +4.0 1775-76 2883 -5.0
1797-98 2733 -0.4
1754-55 2328 -3.8 1776-77 2532 -12.2 1798-99 2699
-1.2
1755-56 2439 +1.0 1777-78 2595 +2.5 1799-00 2692 -0.3
1756-57
2500 +2.5 1778-79 2660 +2.5 1800-01 2729 +1.4
1757-58 2461 -1.6
1779-80 2714 +2.0 1801-02 2730 0.0
1758-59 2469 +0.3 1780-81 2626
-3.2 1802-03 2606? -4.5*
1759-60 2522 +2.1 1782-83 2723 +0.6 1803-04
2725 +4.6
1760-61 2604 +3.3 1783-84 2673 -1.8 1804-05 2776 +1.9
1761-62 2554 -1.9 1784-85 2653 -0.7 1806-07 2763 -1.2
1762-63 2636
+3.2 1785-86 2657 +0.2 1807-08 2771 +0.3
1763-64 2629 -0.3 1786-87
2951 +11.1 1808-09 2737 -1.2
1764-65 2730 +3.8 1787-88 2938 -0.4
1809-10 2715 -0.8
1765-66 2677 -1.9 1788-89 2929 -0.3 1810-11 2727
+0.4
1766-67 2738 +2.3 1789-90 2958 +1.0 1811-12 2711 -0.6
1767-68
2710 -1.0 1790-91 2960 +0.1 1812-13 2710 0.0
1768-69 2781 +2.6
1791-92 2904 -1.9 1813-14 2738 +1.0
1769-70 2793 +0.4 1792-93 2845
-2.0
SOURCES: Northumberland County Order Books, Minute Books,
Personal Property Tax Lists.[4]
*This figure, like others for the
late 1790s and early 1800s, is from personal property lists. But the
figures from the minute book for early 1800s suggest that the 1802-3
figure was 2680; not as big a drop as suggested. That the figure for
1803-4 was virtually the same as the one for 1801-2 confirms that the
figure in between was a recording error.
The table shows a
variety of patterns. Until the Revolutionary War there was a general
upward trend, interrupted every couple of years by a decline. The
longest period of growth occurred between 1769 to 1774, when the number
of tithables peaked at 3,075 (or, based on a three-to-one ratio, 9,225
people). There was a sharp decline in the first two years of the
Revolutionary War, followed by modest growth back to around 2,700
tithables, where the number fluctuated until 1787. There was then
apparently an 11.6 percent jump, which was probably the result of
counting anomalies. The 9,000-person range was reached again at the time
of the first federal census, but there then occurred a general downward
trend to 2,692 tithables and 7,803 persons in 1800. With only one
exception (1803, perhaps a counting error) the number of tithables then
moved between 2,700 and 2,800 for the next fourteen years.
What
are the possible explanations for the periodic reductions in
Northumberland's population? The first is a major social or political
event that caused a significant outflow of people. The beginning of the
American Revolution was such an event. Over a hundred Northumberlanders
were recruited for Continental units between early 1776 and early 1777,
and a significant share of those men -- over 40 percent, in fact -- died
from disease in camp, fell in battle, or were taken prisoner. During the
same period, an unknown number of slaves fled to enemy ships. Thus, the
sharp decline in the number of tithables in 1776 and 1777 may be
attributed to the war (but not completely, as we shall see below). The
decline in 1781 may reflect increased recruitment for the Virginia line
and raids on the county when slaves were taken or escaped.[5]
The
second possible explanation for these population declines is economic.
The number of tithables did, after all, represent the size of the work
force, more than half of which was slaves. In periods of low prices and
contracting credit, planters would be unable to buy new slaves or might
have to sell the ones they had. Poor and middle-income white farmers
might respond to hard times by leaving the county for greener pastures.
Large-scale out-migration, voluntary or otherwise, would reduce the
population or slow its growth, particularly after the end of the war and
the opening of the frontier.
Yet if we compare economic and
population fluctuations, there is little correlation between the two.
The years of deepest recession in America during the second half of the
eighteenth century were 1750, 1753-5, 1760, 1764, 1768-9, 1774, 1778,
1780, and 1783-8. Yet the number of Northumberland tithables increased
in eight of those years, relative to the year before. In contrast, the
number declined in the relative boom years of 1751, 1758, 1762, 1766,
1792, 1793 1795, and 1796. Economic conditions may have been secondary
factor in population fluctuations in the late eighteenth century, but
not the most important. (As discussed above, economic forces may have
stimulated large-scale out-migration between 1840 and 1860.)[6]
The economic hypothesis may be tested more closely by looking at the
changing number of adult white males, which exists for the 1782-1800
period. Table III presents the numbers, along with those for slaves over
16.
TABLE III: NUMBER OF WHITE ADULT MALES AND ADULT SLAVES
NORTHUMBERLAND COUNTY, 1782-1800
Year White Males White Males
White Males Slaves Trend
0ver 21 betw. 16-21 Total
1782 765 (est)
1862
1783 749 1824 same
1784 705 1818 same
1785 706 1797
different
1786 655 1852 ?able year
1787 793 176 969 1982 same
1788 781 163 944 1992 different
1789 776 160 936 1991 same
1790
787 157 944 2002 same
1791 936 2061 different
1792 909 1987 same
1793 886 1949 same
1794 915 1970 same
1795 856 1947 same
1796
792 1956 different
1797 865 1879 different
1798 875 1858 different
1799 864 1835 same
1800 849 1843 different
The overall
pattern is jerky, with repeated movements toward peaks of 900-plus white
male adults. That would not occur if economic opportunities in the
county were in serious decline. And, in more years than not, the number
of slaves moved in the same direction as the number of white male
adults. Because the white males who might leave the county because of
poverty were not likely to be significant slave-holders, we should not
expect parallel movement of the two totals if economic factors were
primary. Thus, even though there was out-migration from the county, it
was probably not the cause of the general decline in population in the
1790s.
If political or economic explanations are not compelling,
perhaps the declines in Northumberland County's population in some years
a medical cause: diseases of epidemic proportions. Indeed, medical
historian Steven Kunitz asserts that a "jagged, saw-toothed" pattern of
population change is characteristic of a pre-modern disease environment
with periodic epidemics.[7]
The main way to test this hypothesis
for Northumberland County is to search for evidence of epidemics to see
if they match periods when the county's population fell. The available
information tends to support the hypothesis.
During the French
and Indian War, in which some Northumberlanders fought, smallpox was
said to have been common in the army fighting in the west. In addition,
there were some deaths from smallpox in Virginia in 1758, the year that
Northumberland's tithables declined 1.6 percent. That was also the year
that malaria may have been particularly virulent on Northern Neck.[8]
The county's tithables declined 1.9 percent in 1766 and 1.0 percent in
1768. In both years, there were reports of smallpox in Williamsburg and,
in 1768, in other parts of Virginia.[9]
The number of
Northumberland's tithables increased by less than one percent in 1770
and 1772. Next door in Richmond County, Landon Carter had a number of
slave children die from "tumified throats" in the 1770 and a high number
of hospital cases in 1772.[10]
In 1776 and 1777, when
Northumberland's tithables declined by 4.6 and 13.3 percent, there were
several outbreaks of disease. An epidemic of some sort hit the state in
the fall, bringing low many soldiers in the Virginia Continental army.
During the winter, smallpox was a serious problem in the main camp in
New Jersey, and there were rumors that the disease was getting back to
Virginia. Thus disease plus the war's demand for men served to reduce
the county's workforce.[11]
The tithable figure for 1781 was 3.2
percent below the previous year. That decline may reflect not only
military recruitment and enemy raids, but also the effect of an epidemic
of some kind that occurred in the fall of 1780.[12]
In October 1788
there was a report of "more illness than usual" in Virginia and of
putrid fever (diphtheria) in Richmond. In 1788-89, Northumberland
tithables declined by 0.3 percent.[13]
The 1793 figure for tithables,
established in mid-year, was 2.0 percent below that for 1792. In January
1793, George Lee Turberville of Richmond County wrote James Madison that
even though the winter had been mild, "Still it has been fatal to
numbers more hearty young men and greater numbers of people have gone
off precipitately with violent peripneumonies than were ever
known--before three Physicians have gone off & Doctor [Walter] Jones . .
. has had a narrow escape & is just recovering."[14]
In 1795, there
was a yellow fever epidemic in Norfolk that was so serious that a
quarantine of ships was ordered and precautions were taken as high up as
Alexandria. There were similar alarms in the next five years, and in all
six, the number of Northumberland tithables declined. In addition, there
was a mass inoculation for smallpox in Fredericksburg in the summer of
1795.[15]
We conclude, therefore, that once Northumberland County
achieved population stability in the middle of the eighteenth century,
subsequent declines in population were probably the result of diseases
of epidemic proportions. That suggests, by the way, that individuals who
died during those years may have died of the disease in question.
The exception to the rule is the period of the Revolution. The
reduction in tithables in those years is an indication of the war's
impact on the county labor force. (And once soldiers joined the army,
death tended to come from disease rather than combat.) The exception
that proves the rule came between 1814 and 1815, when the number of
county tithables dropped by 27 percent from 2738 to 2000. The secondary
cause of this decline was slaves escaping to join British invaders. But
the primary cause was a pandemic, "the severity of which has never been
equaled before or since in Northumberland County." Based on the
three-to-one rule of thumb, around 2200 people departed or died in one
year. Knowing as we do how little the tithable total fluctuated in
normal years, we gain some appreciation of the profound catastrophe this
virulent disease wrought on the people of the county.[16]
The
elements of the county levy are revealed in personal property lists.
They deviated from this standard definition in the early 1780s (see
footnote for Table II for details). Until 1787, the state levy was made
up the first of these two elements; see Netti Schreiner-Yantis and
Florence Speakman Love, The 1787 Census of Virginia, vol. 1
(Springfield, VA: Genealogical Books in Print, 1987), xiv. Thereafter,
it was based on the same figures as the county levy.
For a thorough
discussion of tithables and the person-to-tithable ratio, see Edmund S.
Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial
Virginia (New York: W W Norton, 1975), 395-405. Morton estimates that
for seventeenth-century Virginia as a whole, the ratio of people to
tithables was 2.69-to-1. He would probably attribute the low ratio for
Northumberland County in 1699 to an undercount of non-tithables.
The
author's great-great-grandfather and great-grandfather left
Northumberland County for Texas in 1853.
METHODOLOGICAL NOTE: The
figures for tithables are given as they occurred in the county order
book, with the exception of the figures from 1783 through 1786. These
are adjusted so that their component elements are the same as for the
years before and after. As noted above, the tithable figure in county
records was normally made up of up to three components: the number of
white males over 21 years of age; the number of slaves over 16 years of
age; and the number of white males from 17 to 21 years of age. Through
1787, the state levy was based on the first of these two elements.
According to the personal property tax records for the 1780s, the number
of white males over 21 usually fluctuated between 700 and 750; the
number of white males between 16 and 21 was around 155; and the number
of slaves over 16 (male and female) was usually in the 1800s or 1900s.
(Which makes sense: the number of whites and slaves in the county was
about equal, and the number of white males over 16 would be around half
of all slaves above 16). Yet the total number of tithables in the county
order book in the 1780s is not consistent with the information in the
personal property tax records on each of the components for that figure.
In 1783, 1784, and 1785, the total of components 1 and 2 exceeded the
figure for the county levy by 179 in 1783, 182 in 1784, and 82 in 1785.
In 1786, however, the county tithable number exceeded the state levy
figure by 113.
1787, the county tithable figure was made up of
components 1 and 2 (i.e. it was based on the same number of tithables as
the state levy.
Thereafter, both the county and state levies were
made up of components 1, 2, and 3 (white males and all slaves over 16).
What explains these irregularities? The unusually low figures for the
county levy in 1783-85 may reflect a decision on the part of the county
court to base the tax only on whites and slaves over 21, although why it
would do so is not clear. There may also have been deliberate
undercounting to reduce the state quota. These after all were times when
county sheriffs had great difficulty in their tax collections. That
would be the most plausible explanation of the 11.1% increase from 1786
to 1787. The figures in the table adjust the totals for the mid-1780s.
We ignore the figure for the county levy in the order book and take as a
starting point the total of components 1 and 2 (white males over 21 and
blacks over 16) as reported in the personal property lists. To that
number we add 150 to cover white males from 16 to 21. As a result, that
the numbers for those years are consistent in their make-up with the
years before and the years after.
See my "`Awake, Rouse Your Courage,
Americans Brave': Companies Raised in Northumberland County For the
Virginia Continental Line, 1776 and 1777," The Bulletin of the
Northumberland County Historical Society, 29 (1992): 3-25, and
"Revolution and Community in Northumberland County, Virginia: 1776-82,"
Op. cit., 30 (1993):14-37 for details.
John J. McCusher and Russell
R. Menard, The Economy of British America: 1607-1789 (Chapel Hill: U. of
North Carolina Press, 1985), 63. It is conceivable that the purchases
and sales of slaves might lag economic conditions, yet it seems
unlikely, at least for slaves. The trading of slaves would have to occur
outside of the county to affect the population level, and it seems that
economic upturns or downturns were general throughout the colonies.
Changes in the number of tithables could also be the result of faulty
record-keeping, yet the enumeration system appears to have been
institutionalized by the late eighteenth century and therefore less
prone to error.
Steven Kunitz, "Diseases and Mortality in the
Americas since 1700," in Kenneth F. Kiple, Cambridge World History of
Human Disease, (New York: Cambridge U. Press, 1993), 331.
John Duffy,
Epidemics in Colonial America (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1953), 98, 91; Darrett B. Rutman, Charles Wetherell, and Anita H.
Rutman, "Rhythms of Life: Black and White Seasonality in the Early
Chesapeake," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 11 (1980):46.
John
Duffy, Epidemics in Colonial America , 100.
Jack P. Greene, ed., The
Diary of Landon Carter of Sabine Hall, 1752-1778, vol. 1
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1965), 377, 657-669.
John E. Selby, The Revolution in Virginia, 1775-1783 (Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia, 1988), 128.
Selby, The Revolution in
Virginia, 253.
Joseph Jones to James Madison, 10/20/88, William T.
Hutchinson, et al., eds., The Papers of James Madison (17 vols.; Chicago
and Charlottesville: University of Chicago Press and University Press of
Virginia, 1962 to 1991; hereafter PJM) 11:308.
Turberville to James
Madison, 1/28/93, PJM, 14:444-5.
In volumes 8 and 9 of Palmer, et
al., Calendar of Virginia State Papers, there are a number of entries in
each summer of the late 1790s relating to yellow fever. For the smallpox
inoculation, see PJM, 16:14.
James F. Lewis and J. Motley Booker,
comps., Northumberland County Virginia: Wills 1793-1816 and
Administration 1790-1816 (Heathsville, VA: Northumberland County
Historical Society), iii. [NOTE: See article on "Pandemic in
Northumberland County, 1814-15," for reasons why diphtheria was not the
cause of the epidemic.]
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