Prices and Wages by Decade: 1800-1809

Shows some prices as well. Source: 1872 Report of Commissioners on Bureau of Labor Statistics to the [New Hampshire] Legislature, pp. 34-36.

Chart lists the wage paid for one day of labor in Albany, New York for each year from 1793-1846. Compares to the price of wheat and fowls.

Labor wages were $10-15 per month and included board. Source, p. 148.

Shows average wages, year by year, for workers in the Philadelphia area only. See table explanation for detail. Source: U.S. Department of Commerce, p. 163.

New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland were still sometimes using pounds, shillings and pence. This table converts those amounts into U.S. dollars. Source: American ready reckoner (1806). See further explanation of money in these states in the BLS Bulletin #604.

Table 26 shows daily wages for laborers, with board. The complete chart shows wage data for every year from 1780-1937; the explanation begins on page 43. Source: Vermont Agricultural Experiment Station.

Covers a variety of occupations in diverse industries. Figures are broken down by occupation, year, and sometimes by state and city. Source: U.S. BLS Bulletin #604.

Shows pay data for ships' masters, pursers, surgeon's mates, boatswains, gunners, midshipmen, captain's clerks, master's mates, stewards, cooks and ordinary seamen. Source: American State Papers Naval Affairs vol. I, p. 185.

Source: Monthly Labor Review Jan 1930, pp. 12-15.

Female household servants averaged around 70 cents per week in 1808, according to this 1910 congressional report on the history of women in the U.S. labor force.

Lists salaries along with dates of enactment and statutory authority for each pay increase.

Data and discussion are provided in the "Wages" entry in the Encyclopedia Brittanica, 10th edition, vol. 33, p. 724-726 (source)

Shows the hourly rates of wages for masons, carpenters, excavators, and more building trades in Paris during 1806, 1852, 1873, and 1900. Wages shown in US cents with the conversion to Francs in the chart above. Source: State of New York, Department of Labor Bulletin v.6, pg. 329

The 1872 Report of Commissioners on Bureau of Labor Statistics to the [New Hampshire] Legislature is a rich source of both prices dating from the 1800s: pages 34-36 focus on 1800-1810; pork, beef, veal, and butter prices are discussed on p.24; and a chart (p.32) provides prices for particular foods, articles of clothing, shoes, various household supplies and construction materials in two New Hampshire towns in 1808.

Source: Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor 16th annual report (1885).

This advertisement in the October 13, 1809 issue of The Enquirer of Richmond, Va. lists prices (in dollars per single ream) for various types of paper.

This publication gives the prices of the first umbrellas owned in NH as $5 in Sandown in 1803 and $3 in Long Meadows in 1804. Source: History of old Chester [N.H.] from 1719 to 1869 by Benjamin Chase (1869).

One could have a suit of clothes made for $4 to $5, and shoes cost $1.75 to $2.50 in the Niagara County/Genesee County area. Source, p. 148.

Lists prices paid by the government to supply the Navy. Includes suits ($19 each), caps, pairs of shoes, watch coats, and knapsacks ($1 each). Source: American State Papers.

Merchants' account books show prices for cloth (baize, calico, drugget, linen, India cotton, woolen cloth), shoes, mitts and silk gloves. Also gives prices of palm leaf hats in 1806 and fulled cloth for men's wear. Source: History of old Chester from 1719 to 1869 by B. Chase.

Chart provides prices for particular foods, articles of clothing, shoes, various household supplies and construction materials in two New Hampshire towns, Dunbarton and Lyme.

Source: Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor 16th annual report, 1885.

Shows average prices of cultivated land and unimproved land. Source: Economica: a statistical manual for the United States (1806), p. 60.

Lists average price of land near towns, and the cost of house rent in Boston, NYC, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Charleston. Source: History of wages in the U.S. from Colonial times to 1928.

Source: Statistical view of the district of Maine (1816), p. 103.

Table shows prices in Dunbarton New Hampshire and Lyme, Connecticut. Source: New Hampshire Bureau of Labor Statistics report, p. 30

Source: Mass. Bureau of Statistics of Labor 16th annual report (1885).

One company's advertised coach fare was $1 for a five-hour journey from Wilmington to Philadelphia, a distance of about 40 miles. Source: Wilmington Delaware Gazette newspaper, July 12, 1809.

A stage coach company was advertising fares between Petersburg VA and Charleston SC at 7 cents per mile with a 20 pound baggage allowance. Source: Richmond VA Enquirer, January 14, 1808.

This expense report for a journey from Litchfield, CT to Detroit and back in 1801 shows the stage coach fare for each leg of travel. Source: American State Papers, Vol. 5 (1832).

Papers at the Maryland Historical Society show anecdotally that one person's expenses for ocean passage amounted to $80.64. Source: Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science publication, 1904.

An account of the author's travels, this book includes what was paid for various modes of travel such as the engagement of a wagon and steam ship fare from Albany to New York. Source: Travels through Canada, and the United States of North America in the years 1806, 1807, & 1808 by John Lambert (1816). Not a government document.

This account of the authors travels tell what he paid for a horse, with saddle and bridle, in Savannah, Georgia in June 1806.

Milk cows cost from $16 to $25; cattle for driving, $3 to $4 per hundred pounds; a pair of good working horses, $100 to $125; sheep, from $2 to $4 in the Niagara County/Genesee County area. Source, p. 148.

Chart from the Historian of the United States Postal Service shows price to mail a domestic letter. Not included are postage rates for ship and steamboat letters and "drop letters" (for local delivery), which were assigned different rates.

The Library of Congress' "Chronicling America" website is a source for prices and subscription rates for newspapers. Set the date range, click "GO" and then check the "Show only front pages" box. If the price is not in the masthead, search for publisher's information somewhere in the body of the paper - often in the left column of the front page. Annual subscription rates are likely to be listed there.

Tells cost of a share and annual fees. Source: Travels in the United States of America, in the years 1806& 1807, and 1809, 1810, & 1811 by John Melish (1812).

Advertisement for Rumford Academy in the January 13, 1809 issue of the Virginia Argus of Richmond, Va. gives prices (in pounds) for board and tuition.

Advertisement for a private day and night school in Richmond tells tuition (in dollars). From the March 18, 1808 issue of The Enquirer of Richmond, Va.

Advertisement for a private boarding school for boys and girls in Albemarle County with prices (in pounds) for boarding and tuition, including individual cost per term and cost of services like wardrobe care. From the December 26, 1806 issue of the Virginia Argus of Richmond, Va.

Advertisement for Wingfield Academy in the December 21, 1805 issue of The Enquirer of Richmond, Va. gives cost (in pounds) of board, tuition, and washing.

This biographical piece tells the fee a physician charged an aspiring doctor for four years tuition ($400) at his home in Cincinnati. Source: A biographical notice of Daniel Drake, M.D., of Cincinnati by Meigs (1853).

Source: Laws of Yale College, 1808

This article in the August 1, 1804 issue of The National Intelligencer and Washington Advertiser explains some costs (in dollars) of attending Georgetown College.

The mineral water was believed to help "in all cases of debility; in rheumatism of the chronic kind; in gout; in bilious and febrile habits; in an incipient consumption, where ulcers or tubercles are not yet formed in the lungs; and in all complaints of the kidneys, bladder, and urinary passages" in addition to being effective for sores and rattlesnake bite (page 156). A notice on the mineral springs of Virginia published in the Philadelphia medical and physical journal in 1805 gives the price of board at Sweet Springs in Bottatourt County, VA as $6 a week in 1800.

One Virginia doctor advertised his fees for 1800 as follows: "Visiting patients, a quarter of a dollar for every miles riding in going & returning...Attendance at the rate of Seven Dollars for twenty-four hours. Prescriptions Three Dollars each. The lowest price for a Surgical operation, one Dollar." Source: Medicine in Virginia in the eighteenth century, by Wyndham B. Blanton, M.D. (1931). For more from this source, use the table of contents or the index then jump to the desired page number.

Lists wholesale prices of butter, cheese, potatoes, lard, codfish, wheat, corn, rice, flour, herring, ham, tobacco and tallow in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Charleston. Source: History of wages in the United States from Colonial times to 1928, p.21.

This amazing table shows wholesale (not retail) prices per pound for wheat flour, sugar, raw cotton, wool, nails, etc. as well as wholesale prices per yard of cotton sheeting, per ton of coal, gallon of turpentine, per 1000 bricks, and more for every year from 1800-1970. Source: Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, p.209.

Find wholesale prices for hundreds of items in "Philadelphia Prices Current," published weekly in the Philadelphia newspaper Gazette of the United States & Daily Advertiser.

The newspaper Ming's New-York Price Current listed the price of foods, beans, meats, nuts, wine, rum, spices; building materials including nails, lumber by the type of wood, shingles, glass panes. Also shows prices for gunpowder, candles, deer skins and fur pelts including beaver, mink, otter, red fox and more.

Lists prices of wheat, bread, wine, beef, pork, butter and rice. Source: Bulletin of the U.S. Bureau of Labor, Vol. 20 #87, pp. 599-607.

Shows the Spanish dollar price and the British pound price for one ounce of gold or silver for each year from 1797-1838. Also shows the cost for gold and silver on Hamburg and Paris exchanges. Source: A History of Prices... by Thomas Tooke, p.386.