APPENDIX C

Tea Prices, 1773–1776

Tea prices reflect variations in the supply and demand of tea. They may also hint at shifts in supply and demand of banned goods generally.

Prices for bohea, the most widely consumed tea and the best indicator of the general tea market, are considered here. Other grades were more expensive and sold at lower volumes, with price changes less reflective of a general market and more reflective of local idiosyncrasies.

Prices are in sterling shillings. Shillings were divided into twelve pence but are expressed in table C.1 in decimal format to allow easier comparison with figure C.1.

How to Read Figure C.1

Figure C.1 shows wholesale prices for bohea tea in various colonial locations. Prices have been converted to pounds sterling using McCusker’s conversion data.¹ The 1773 price increases occurred after news of the Company’s shipments were known, reflecting a tea shortage as merchants canceled orders in anticipation of a large supply of Company tea. Since that tea never landed, tea prices remained high at the beginning of 1774. Tea prices fluctuated throughout 1774 but reveal a visible downward trend. This indicates that new supplies of Dutch tea, smuggled into mid-Atlantic ports, were eventually able to meet continued demand. Prices returned to earlier levels in 1775, probably from the combined effect of new tea supplies and reduced tea demand as the Association took hold. Note that while prices here are in sterling, prices described in chapter 1 of 6/6 a pound are in Pennsylvania currency, which converts to roughly 3/11 (or 3.9) sterling. The New York price series from Cole, Wholesale Commodity Prices, has not been used here. That series gives an unchanging price for bohea from July 1773 to May 1775 of 4.5 New York shillings per pound. In 1774 this converted to 2.49 shilling sterling. These numbers are apparently extracted from the New York Gazette price current and likely reflect customary and/or regulated prices rather than market transactions, which have more variance.

How to Read Figure C.2

Retail prices remained remarkably consistent within each region. Prices remained higher in certain towns, suggesting the attractiveness of shipping tea from New York to Newport, for example. Stable pricing suggests that during 1775, reduced demand (from partial compliance) and reduced supply (from partial non-importation) roughly and consistently matched. Newport prices also may have been affected by the shutdown of supply from Boston. Whether merchants in Savannah, Newport, and other towns would have to take a loss by selling tea at the Continental price is unclear, as their cost of acquiring the tea is not always known.

Maryland data come from Glassford & Company’s Chesapeake factors. They sourced their tea from Britain and may have been less affected by changes in the Philadelphia price than merchants in Chesapeake market towns. Yorktown, Virginia, merchant William Reynolds reported in December 1774 that tea had returned to “a very moderate price” from, implicitly, a higher one. Glassford factors recorded sales in different monies, usually either “currency” (Maryland colonial currency) or “sterling goods” (purchases on loan, with the debt denominated in sterling). This was repaid by the customer in tobacco or other goods. Occasional sales were recorded in “cash” (i.e., for Spanish silver dollars). Separate “currency” and “sterling goods” price series have been generated from Glassford records. However, the ledgers do not imply a conversion rate that works across grades of tea or is consistent with McCusker. As such, “currency” sales have been excluded in preference for “sterling goods,” which can be readily compared to prices in other colonies.²

The old East India Company tea was sold in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1776. While there is no 1776 conversion rate, the 1775 South Carolina/sterling conversion rate shows 25s South Carolina currency per pound of bohea converts to 3.4 shillings, which is close to the Continental price (3s 4½ d sterling or ¾ of a dollar). It is unclear, however, how far off from the 1775 rate the 1776 rate was. In May 1775, John Amory sold three pounds of bohea at 5 shillings Massachusetts currency a pound in Boston, which converts to 4.26 shillings in decimal pounds sterling.³