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were still using the British system of money.
States issued their own currency - New York had New York
Pounds, Virginia - Virginia Pounds, and Pennsylvania had
Pennsylvania Pounds.
(Fort Pitt, which was sold in 1772 for parts, was paid
for in New York Pounds).
The different states' currency varied from one another by
the amount of silver, by which it could be redeemed.
A Pound was something like a five-dollar bill.
It consisted of 20 shillings, which were like quarters
(20 quarters in five dollars).
Each shilling was worth twelve pence, so a pence was a
little more than two cents.
In day-to-day life though, money didn't actually change
hands.
People traded "on-account," a barter system
wherein goods or services were given a value in pounds, but when
people squared up their debts, or accounts, with each other,
they paid their debts in commodities, such as livestock,
produce, grain, or whiskey.
A subject for a later story is the Whiskey Rebellion,
where the young American government tried to collect a tax on
the manufacture of whiskey, southwest Pennsylvania's chief
industry, by demanding payment in coinage which did not exist
here.
Benjamin
received, first through Virginia, 350 acres in 1775. I don't know if it was surveyed, or approximated.
When Pennsylvania had the property surveyed, it became
333 acres. If some
was lost through "adjustments," or if the amount - 350
acres, was not originally accurate, remains for further
research. The center of his land lay where present-day Ridge Road, Gill
Hall, and Finleyville Road intersect.
If you drive south on Gill Hall, cross Peter's Creek, and
go through the tunnel, you come out on the north portion of
Custard's property.
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The
property is sort-of star shaped.
If you picture it on a map, starting at the top of a
star, going to the right down to the southeast, the property
line ran from Peter's Creek southeast along Castor Road up to
what is now Ridge Road, then east on Ridge to Knight, then south
along Knight to the corner opposite Ignatz Petrovich's house.
Then,
unlike the "star," southwest along the woods, with the
old Heath place to the south, and Greenwald's / Haines' farm to
the north.
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