Peter Mountague Debtr Novembr 8 To 1 hors Jorney to Springfield 00 03 00 77 To Making a cloath coate 00 05 06                         00 03 00     00 04 00     00 15 06 William Brooks is Debr Sept 1688 To 10 pound & ½ of beef att 2s 1/2d 00 02 02 Novembr To 58 pound of beefe att []d ½ pr lb 00 12 01   To 2 pound of flax 00 02 00   To 1 bush 1/w 00 03 00 16 3 Augst 3d 1694 Ebenezr Brooks allowed me       14 5 four shillings: on acct of a price of 00 19 03 1 10 Land I sould his fathr as on page 68: 00 04 00     01 03 03 Word in Season whey Lay Mewing on my Bed Laid Jonathan Franklin Dbtr 78 To Makeing a sute Linde : if he pay wheat 00 12 00 Simon Beaman is Debtr May: 84 To plowing an acre of Land att derefild   in ye great meddow   To Breaking up an acre of Land in old fort Barnaby Hinsdell Dr May 1690 To 1 Acre plowing in old fort 00 05 00   To carting a lode of posts 00 02 06 June To 1 Day Carting bushes 00 05 00   To a hour Jorney to Hartford 00 06 00   payd to Doctr Hastings for him 00 03 00 Jno Evans is Debtr July: 1691   £ s d   To 3 Cattle a day to Cart Hay 00 03 00   To Cutting out a Cote for himself 00   06   To Weighting 2 attachmts 00 01 00 July: 94 To weighting a load of lede 00 02 06 Decr 94 To a sled lode of wood 00 02 06 Janr To stoding 2 Lode of wood 00 03 04 July 19 to a float load of wood 00 02 06 1695 18 To pounding 4 hogg

(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.

An acute labor shortage plagued the colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In Europe, a large and growing population kept wage rates low and land was at a costly premium. The fledgling economy of the colonies turned this old relationship on its head. Labor, not land, was expensive and in short supply.

Indentured servants, and later, slaves met the insatiable demand for labor in the Chesapeake region of Virginia and Maryland. New England settlers also used slave labor. The settlement patterns and economy of this northern region prevented slavery from solving the worker shortage there, however. New Englanders relied for the most part upon an intricate system of labor exchange to meet their pressing need for labor. Building homes and establishing farms required intensive and often backbreaking toil. To accomplish these tasks, people coexisted in an intricate web of interdependence, performing labor for neighbors who sold and exchanged their labor in return.

Joseph Barnard was among the earliest settlers of the newly established town of Deerfield, Massachusetts. This page from Barnard's account book records transactions with Barnabas Hinsdell, also of Deerfield. Most of the transactions involved work Hinsdell and Barnard performed for one another.

The surviving pages of Barnard's account book are a window onto a world of complex social and economic relationships. His accounts also reveal the ways in which he and others navigated a cash-poor economy. Very little actual currency ever changed hands; debts usually were paid in goods and services. At the same time, the monetary value Barnard assigned to each transaction reveals that these exchanges were more than simple bartering. Debtors risked arrest and even imprisonment if they could not or would not pay what they owed. Creditors routinely sued defaulting debtors. Written accounts like the ones that Barnard so carefully kept were admissible in a court of law to prove default.

top of page

Account book of Joseph Barnard