¹ A noteworthy exception, discussing in detail colonists' rights in land, is Ch. 6, “Planting the Tenures and Inheritance,” Hughes, Jonathan R. T., Social Control in the Colonial Economy (Charlottesville, Virginia, 1976).Google Scholar

² Widows had “dower” rights that provided them with a certain portion of land (often one-third of the landed estate), which they could neither give away nor sell. In much of the country, a husband could not eliminate dower rights by selling or giving away his land.Google Scholar

³ This can be contrasted with the experience of England where, in the event of intestacy, descent to the eldest son lasted until 1926.Google Scholar

⁴ For the former, see Haskins, George L., “The Beginnings of Partible Inheritance in the American Colonies,” The Yale Law Journal, 51 (05 1941–1942), 1280–1315;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Hughes, Social Control, and Morris, “Primogeniture,” For explanations based on an economic rationale, see Friedman, Lawrence M., A History of American Law (New York, 1973),Google ScholarGreven, Philip J. Jr, Four Generations (Ithaca, 1970),Google Scholar and Harris, Marshall, Origin of the Land Tenure System in the United States (Ames, 1953).Google Scholar

⁵ See Haskins, “The Beginnings,” and Harris, Origin.Google Scholar

⁶ See Haskins, “The Beginnings,”Google Scholar

⁷ Keim, Ray C., “Primogeniture and Entail in Colonial Virginia,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 25 (10, 1968), 545–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸ See Friedman, A History, pp. 220–21.Google Scholar

⁹ See Eckenrode, H. J., The Revolution in Virginia (Boston, 1916);Google ScholarNevins, Allan, The American States During and After the Revolution, 1775–1789 (New York, 1924), pp. 442–43;Google Scholar and Lingley, Charles Ramsdell, The Transition in Virginia from Colony to Commonwealth (New York, 1910).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Numerous scholars have pointed to the association between plantations and primogeniture. See, for example, Haskins, “The Beginnings,” Gray, Lewis C., History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860 (Boston, Massachusetts, reprinted 1958), Friedman, A History, and Harris, Origin. Simply letting the analysis stand with the association between plantations and primogeniture, however, begs the question of why the plantation system was prevalent in the South and not in the North. We are also not the first to recognize the comparative advantage in monitoring slaves in labor-intensive crops. See especially Gray, History of Agriculture, pp. 458, 463, 469, and 478–480. Yet, no one appears to have linked slave supervision costs to the maintenance of primogeniture.Google Scholar

¹¹ See Alston, Lee J., “Tenure Choice in Southern Agriculture, 1930–1960,” Explorations in Economic History, 18 (07, 1981). 211–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Alston, Lee J. and Higgs, Robert, “Contractual Mix in Southern Agriculture since the Civil War: Facts. Hypotheses, and Tests,” this Journal, 42 (06 1982), 327–53. for tests of the importance of labor supervision costs in determining contractural mix in Southern agriculture after the Civil War.Google Scholar

¹² Eckenrode, The Revolution, Nevins, The American States; and Lingley, The Transition.Google Scholar

¹³ Keim, “Primogeniture and Entail.”Google Scholar

¹⁴ Parker, William N., in American Economic Growth by Davis, Lance E., Easterlin, Richard A., Parker, William N., et al. , (New York, 1972), quoted from p. 395.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Bidwell, Percy Wells and Falconer, John I., History of Agriculture in the Northern United States (Washington, D.C., 1925), p. 63.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Even though patroonships appear to have declined in rnportance early in the Colonial period, large grants of land in the form of manors continued to be made by Stuyvesant and early English governors. See Osgood, Herbert L., The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, Vol. 2 (New York, 1904), pp. 31–33.Google Scholar

¹⁷ It appears that the manors that succeeded the patroonships similarly relied on nonfamily labor.Google Scholar

¹⁸ See Morris, “Primogeniture,” p. 78.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Andrews, Charles M., Our Earliest Colonial Settlements, reprinted (U.K., 1973).Google Scholar For a summary of the importance of town government versus a central colonial government in Rhode Island, see Foster, William E., “Town Government in Rhode Island,” in Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, Vol. 4 (Baltimore, 1896).Google Scholar

²⁰ Channing, Edward, “The Narragansett Planters,” in Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, Vol. 4 (Baltimore, 1896).Google Scholar

²¹ See Habakkuk, H. J., “Family Structure and Economic Change in 19th Century Europe,” this Journal, 15 (03. 1955), 1–12, for a particularly valuable discussion of demographic effects of inheritance practices.Google Scholar

²² This is the basis of Easterlin's, Richard A., “Population Change and Farm Settlement in the Northern United States,” this Journal, 36 (03. 1976), 45–75, bequest model. He argues that this was the prevailing practice in the North. We suggest that the existence of a bequest motive was facilitated by the availability of economic opportunities off the farm.Google Scholar

²³ Efficient farm size is generally associated with impartibility of land. Partibility, however, would occur if family farms were large enough to subdivide into smaller yet still efficient size farms.Google Scholar

²⁴ This hypothesis provides a possible rationale for the success of land availability measures in accounting for the cross-sectional and time-series variation in U.S. birth rates. See Schapiro, Morton Owen, “Land Availability and Fertility in the United States, 1760–1870,” this Journal, 42 (09 1982), 577–600.Google ScholarPubMed The notion that land scarcity may create pressure to limit fertility is consistent with Le Play's, FredericL'Organization de la Famille (Paris, 1871) analysis of the decline in birth rates in nineteenth-century France. He argues that parents wanted to maintain a system of impartibility but were forced into partibility by the Civil Code. The result was a decline in birth rates in order to minimize the division of farmland.Google Scholar

²⁵ Greven, Four Generations.Google Scholar

²⁶ Ibid., p. 224.

²⁷ Tracy, Patricia J., Jonathan Edwards, Pastor: Religion and Society in Eighteenth Century Northampton (New York, 1980).Google Scholar

²⁸ Ibid., p. 102.

²⁹ Our land availability measure is the ratio of rural population at time t to the maximum rural population reached when rural population initially peaked. See Schapiro, “Land Availability,” for a more complete description of this land availability proxy.Google Scholar

³⁰ We are presently extending our research to include regression analysis to differentiate statistically among the various factors hypothesized to influence population growth. In this way we will be able to assess more rigorously the importance of inheritance laws.Google Scholar