Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/118

 reach of the English day laborer in the same age. The slaves of the seventeenth century had probably more ground for satisfaction in this respect than the slaves of the nineteenth, whose staple food was maize-bread and bacon. The negro of the seventeenth century also required less expensive clothing than the white servant. In the advertisement of a slave who had run away from his master, which was placed on record in York County in 1686, he is described as having been dressed in &#8220;red cotton,&#8221; and as wearing &#8220;a waistcoat, canvas drawers, and a broad brim black hat.&#8221; In another case, the clothing of an African slave consisted of a full suit, a doublet, a pair of drawers, a pair of shoes and a cap.

The county records of the seventeenth century show that the negro quarter had become a recognized part of the plantation buildings in the eighth and ninth decades. The contents of the houses were of the simplest character, as may be discovered by an examination of contemporaneous inventories. An instance may be given by way of illustration. In the Stratton inventory brought before the Henrico court in 1697, the furniture and utensils in the cabin of one of the slaves are enumerated, and they consisted of several chairs and a bed, an iron kettle weighing fifteen pounds, a brass kettle, an iron pot, a pair of pot-racks, a pothook, a frying-pan and a beer-barrel.