products are wheat, indian corn, oats, and hay, as they have been for. many years since tobacco cultivation was given up. In some of the Chesapeake sections, both of Virginia and of Maryland, the cultivation of peas and of small fruits for the city markets has, in part, displaced the usual crops mentioned above. This is also true of the peachgrowing districts of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and is, of course, true of the trucking country back from the water around Norfolk. What is said in the following pages would have to be greatly modified to apply to the latter sections with especial force. But it is believed, as the result of inquiries addressed to those in a position to know the various local conditions, that the Litwalton-Whealton neighborhood may be taken as a fair, if somewhat pronounced, type of the condition of the Negroes in this great oyster and fish producing region, in which they are apparently making themselves more permanently at home; but whether in increasing numbers proportionately to the whites is a matter of doubt.

When the peanut country of southern Virginia and the cotton region of North Carolina are reached, the agricultural conditions are so changed as to make it doubtful if the conclusions here set forth are applicable.

The counties of Virginia and Maryland bordering on the Chesapeake and its oyster-bearing affluents, which this report aims to represent, contained, according to the census of 1890, about 600,000 inhabitants, of whom about 250,000 were Negroes. The total land area is about 11,000 square miles. As appears elsewhere only a certain portion of the territory and of the Negro population are included in this discussion.

LANCASTER COUNTY.

Lancaster, organized into a county in 1652, is the southernmost county of the famous "northern neck" of Virginia, as for about 250 years that tract of the Old Dominion has been called which begins at Chesapeake Bay and broadens out between the Potomac on the east and the Rappahannock on the west and is bounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains, in the northwestern part of the State. The name is usually understood nowadays to apply to the lower part of this territory, washed by the tides in these two majestic streams. The northern neck seems to have been named by way of distinction from the peninsula, beginning farther down the bay between the York and the James, and from the "south side" of the James. The term "neck" is doubtless due to the fact that at one point the waters of the Potomac are divided from those of the Rappahannock by a narrow neck of land only a few miles wide.

Lancaster County is bounded on the east by Chesapeake Bay, on the northeast by Northumberland County, on the north by Richmond County, and on the west and south by the Rappahannock River, which

is from 3 to 5 miles wide the entire length of the county and covers some of the finest oyster beds in the country.

The banks of the Rappahannock are for the most part several feet above the surface of the water, rising in many places to low bluffs. The fertile lowlands extend some distance back from the river, and then the country rises somewhat to the low central plateau, where there are considerable hills in the watershed, formed apparently by the erosions of small streams. This central plateau is still spoken of as the "forest" by the country people, a name that carries its own suggestion of the limits of former settlement and cultivation under the old tobacco régime, when the wealthy planters lived gayly along the water front; a name, also, that in more recent years, until the rise of the oyster industry, marked probably the chief source of wealth to the county. For it is only within the very recent past that the valuable forest has been stripped from the face of the country. There is still a little lumbering going on, but the industry has been ruined for years to

come.

According to the record in the county clerk's office in 1900, Lancaster County contains 80,434 acres. In 1890 the census showed the following division of the land into farms:

NUMBER AND PER CENT OF FARMS IN LANCASTER COUNTY, BY SIZE, 1890.

Sixty-seven per cent of the farms were under 50 acres, and the average size of the farms was 68 acres. This indicates that the process of breaking up the large tracts into small farms had gone far. It is still going on, as will be seen.

The following table shows the tenure of farms in Lancaster County in 1890:

TENURE OF FARMS IN LANCASTER COUNTY, 1890.

Lancaster belonged in 1890 in the third of the counties of Virginia which had 80 per cent or more of owner cultivators. It was almost the equal in this particular, 82.66 per cent against 83.77 per cent, of the admirably situated Montgomery County, Md., and much above the per cent, 70.71, for Prince Edward County, Va. (a)

These 888 farms were worth in 1890, $892,870; they had on them farm implements worth $28,380. With an outlay of $8,153 for fertilizers, they produced crops and farm products of various kinds to the value of $150,210, an average of about $169 per farm as compared with an average of about $782 per farm for Montgomery County. The farm products were as follows, a few very small items being omitted:

Vegetables, small fruits, worth..

The live stock on these farms in 1890 was as follows:

Horses

Mules

Oxen

Sheep

Cows...

Other cattle.

Swine.

Chickens

Turkeys.

..do....

112

.do.... 2,995

.do....

4,002

..do.... 11,502

955

..tons..

1,386

-pounds..

52, 645

Geese

Ducks.

These were valued at $125,930.

2,821

The combined true valuation of the real estate and live stock in 1890 was $1,018,800. The assessed valuation of real estate and improvements at the census of 1890 was $625,914. In 1900 the assessed valuation was $713,399, representing a gain of 13.98 per cent for the period of 10 years.

a See reports for Sandy Spring and Farmville, Bulletins Nos. 32 and 14.

The basis for the tax levy for 1899-1900, according to the statistics in the office of the county clerk, was: Realty, $713,398.91; personalty, $331,765; total, $1,045,163.91; and 2,129 polls. This basis yielded, at the rate of $0.90 per $100 of property and of $1 per poll, the sum of $11,535.48.

In 1899-1900 the county, according to the report of the county superintendent of schools, had 31 public schools and 32 schoolhouses, a colored school in one district being held in one schoolhouse for one half session and in another schoolhouse for the other half session. There were no graded schools. The average length for the yearly school session was 6.33 months. Of these schools, 19 were white, with 23 teachers, of whom 5 were males and 18 females; and 12 were colored schools, with 12 teachers, 3 males and 9 females. The average yearly salary of the teachers was $164.66, distributed as follows: White teachers, males, $183.66; females, $174.16. Colored teachers, males, $158.33; females, $142.50.

For these schools the county received for the session of 1899-1900 from the State school funds, $5,086.16; from the county school funds, $1,346.02; from the district funds, $1,646.94; from balances on hand and from other sources, (a) $1,271.36, a total of $9,350.48. Of this amount $6,904.95 was expended for the current expenses of public instruction, including $5,670, which went for teachers' salaries.

One incorporated academy for whites is reported, which was kept open during a nine-months' session, and had 5 teachers, 1 male and 4 females, and 73 pupils of both sexes.

The total realty of the county, as of record in the county clerk's office for the year ending June 30, 1900, was 80,434.39 acres, assessed at $713,398.91, of which 70,811.41 acres were owned by the whites, at an assessed valuation of $620,225.07, and 9,622.98 acres were owned by the Negroes, at an assessed valuation of $93,173.84. The total personal property of the county was assessed at $331,765, of which the whites owned $276,302, and the Negroes $55,463. It will be seen that the Negroes own nearly 12 per cent of the land of the county and

a One of these sources deserves to be mentioned particularly. It will be recalled that the struggle for religious freedom in Virginia, which went on during and immediately after the Revolutionary struggle for civil liberty, ended in 1802 in the passage of an act ordering the sale by the overseers of the poor of the glebes or farms belonging to what had been the Established Church. The money thus obtained in each parish was to be "appropriated to the poor of the parish, or to any other object which a majority of freeholders and housekeepers in the parish might by writing direct, provided that nothing should authorize an appropriation of it to any religious purpose whatever." The glebe fund thus derived in Lancaster County was put into the hands of trustees for the benefit of public education, and in 1899-1900, almost a century after its origin, yielded $563.87 for the use of the public schools. See "The Struggle for Religious Freedom in Virginia: The Baptists," by Wm. Taylor Thom, Series XVIII, Johns Hopkins University Studies, 1900.

about 13 per cent of its assessed value; and also that they own nearly 17 per cent of the assessed personalty. The realty owned by Negroes should probably be increased by at least 500 acres, in order to include lands bought and not yet recorded as transferred and lands in process of purchase. The proportion, especially of lands in process of purchase, may easily be much larger. For example, 6 of the families of the Litwalton neighborhood are reported as now buying 55 acres of land. In many cases the sellers withhold title until purchase money and interest have been all paid, and this process often extends over many years. Sometimes, of course, trust deeds are taken and title is conveyed

at once.

Twenty-four out of 49 property-holding families in the Litwalton neighborhood report their property as owned for 10 years or more, or as inherited; and of the remaining 25 families it is almost certain that the greater number were many years in paying before they got titles to their property. In other words, it is most probable that much the larger part of this real estate was bought by the Negroes before 1890, possibly even earlier. One intelligent Negro man was of the opinion that his people were acquiring land as rapidly now as at any time during the last 30 years; but that was not the opinion at the county clerk's office, nor of some well-informed white men, by whom it was held that the change in the conditions of the oyster industry had thrown less money into the hands of the Litwalton Negroes than was the case 15 or 20 years ago, and that, in consequence, they were acquiring land less rapidly.

That they hold at this time 12 per cent of the surface of the county and about 17 per cent of its assessed personalty, is, however, a noteworthy fact. They are assessed for something like one-sixth of the local taxes. They outnumber the whites in the proportion of 1.161 adult males to 1,068 adult males.

The record of the population during the century is of interest. The following table is taken from the census records:

POPULATION OF LANCASTER COUNTY, 1790 TO 1890.

The population did not reach the mark of 1790 again until 1880. It was lowest during the decades from 1820 to 1850, when the great