Artifact: Letter to Joseph Watson
Materials: Paper
Dimensions: Overall: 6 3/8 x 7 5/8in.
Date: 1844
Origin: Pennsylvania, Bucks County, Newtown
Collection: Image Courtesy of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
License: All rights reserved
Ledger Entry: Paper
Department: Literacy
Customer: Vorlinda Wade
Ledger Page: 125
Imported From: Most paper was imported from England. American paper production did not become prevalent until the later eighteenth century.
Product Description
Paper was used then, as it is now, for a variety of purposes including writing letters, keeping accounts and lists. Paper was most frequently sold by the quire, or twenty-four sheets. Larger orders of paper were per ream, a total of twenty quires.
Citation: Norman B. Wilkinson, Papermaking in America (Greenville, DE: The Hagley Museum, 1975).; Beal, Peter. "ream." In A Dictionary of English Manuscript Terminology 1450–2000. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Historical Price: 1 shilling, 8 pence per quire; Modern USD: $18.6
Product Variations
The databases record thirty-nine purchases of paper. Most of these were purchased by the quire; however Allan Macrae purchased two reams of paper. Most of the paper sales were not qualified but one purchase was identified as writing paper and another as post paper. In price, paper ranged from half a pence for one quire to twelve shillings six pence for a ream.
