Few things illustrate just how sparsely small farmers lived than their inventories. An inventory is a listing of a person's belongings, and the value of those belongings, created after that person died. The county court assigned men from the town to make the inventory and assess the value of the items. The inventory was returned to the court and taxes were assigned. Historians now use such inventories to find out how people lived and to compare the differences across class, regional, and racial lines.

Unlike many other states, Virginia inventories did not include land or buildings (they were assessed separately). Many personal items of "sentimental value" were passed down before the inventory-takers arrived. With those exceptions, basically everything else a person owned was included in an inventory upon his or her death (this included slaves, who were usually listed by name and given an individual value). This particular inventory, created in 1775 for Robert Smith in York County, Virginia, gives us a good example of how we can reconstruct parts of his life based on just a simple list. For example, Smith owns very little livestock or agricultural equipment - just one cow, some fodder (presumably to feed that cow), and iron wedges. He had to do some farming for his own subsistence, but it seems he was mainly a carpenter. How do we know this? We know because he leaves behind a "lot" (an unspecified amount) of carpenters tools as well as specialized tools like a cross-cut saw, suggesting he had a need and use for these more professional tools. It is very possible that he served in the military or in a militia, as not everyone owned both a sword and a gun.

The value of Robert Smith's estate is equally important. According to the three men who made his inventory (and who signed the inventory at the bottom), everything Smith left behind was worth a total of 58 pounds, 13 shillings, and 7 pence. By comparison, a male slave in good health was worth approximately 70 pounds. Owning dozens of slaves could raise a farmer's worth into the hundreds of pounds. While there is no perfect example of the "average farmer" of the time, we can easily see from this inventory that someone like Robert Smith had a very humble, bare-bones existence.

York County (Virginia) Inventory for Robert Smith

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