Land prices in seventeenth-century Maryland

The American colonial records of the seventeenth century in many cases do not offer enough economic material for statistical price studies. However the archives of seven counties in Maryland do contain land records of reasonable adequacy for the period from 1663 to 1700. From such sources a total sample of 1,683 land prices is secured with enough descriptive material to allow a comparison of improved and unimproved plantations and a determination of the residences of buyers and sellers. The resulting price trends verify within the limits of the article the normal reasoning about land values in a rapidly growing colonial settlement. It seems probable that the specialized agricultural interest of the Maryland colonists and the presence of widespread waterways accentuated the increase in land prices which in four decades showed an advance of 135 per cent. Speculation in land warrants was also a consideration, even in a new continent where virgin land was held to be limitless. For comparative purposes there is used both the absolute land prices in pounds of tobacco and also price indexes.