is from 3 to 5 miles wide the entire length of the county and covers some of the finest oyster beds in the country.

The banks of the Rappahannock are for the most part several feet above the surface of the water, rising in many places to low bluffs. The fertile lowlands extend some distance back from the river, and then the country rises somewhat to the low central plateau, where there are considerable hills in the watershed, formed apparently by the erosions of small streams. This central plateau is still spoken of as the "forest" by the country people, a name that carries its own suggestion of the limits of former settlement and cultivation under the old tobacco régime, when the wealthy planters lived gayly along the water front; a name, also, that in more recent years, until the rise of the oyster industry, marked probably the chief source of wealth to the county. For it is only within the very recent past that the valuable forest has been stripped from the face of the country. There is still a little lumbering going on, but the industry has been ruined for years to

come.

According to the record in the county clerk's office in 1900, Lancaster County contains 80,434 acres. In 1890 the census showed the following division of the land into farms:

NUMBER AND PER CENT OF FARMS IN LANCASTER COUNTY, BY SIZE, 1890.

Sixty-seven per cent of the farms were under 50 acres, and the average size of the farms was 68 acres. This indicates that the process of breaking up the large tracts into small farms had gone far. It is still going on, as will be seen.

The following table shows the tenure of farms in Lancaster County in 1890:

TENURE OF FARMS IN LANCASTER COUNTY, 1890.

Lancaster belonged in 1890 in the third of the counties of Virginia which had 80 per cent or more of owner cultivators. It was almost the equal in this particular, 82.66 per cent against 83.77 per cent, of the admirably situated Montgomery County, Md., and much above the per cent, 70.71, for Prince Edward County, Va. (a)

These 888 farms were worth in 1890, $892,870; they had on them farm implements worth $28,380. With an outlay of $8,153 for fertilizers, they produced crops and farm products of various kinds to the value of $150,210, an average of about $169 per farm as compared with an average of about $782 per farm for Montgomery County. The farm products were as follows, a few very small items being omitted:

Vegetables, small fruits, worth..

The live stock on these farms in 1890 was as follows:

Horses

Mules

Oxen.

Sheep

Cows..

Other cattle..

Swine.

Chickens

Turkeys

$130.00

1,045

67

842

972 1, 139

958

4, 252

54, 576

3, 384

2, 148

Geese

Ducks.

These were valued at $125,930.

2, 821

The combined true valuation of the real estate and live stock in 1890 was $1,018,800. The assessed valuation of real estate and improvements at the census of 1890 was $625,914. In 1900 the assessed valuation was $713,399, representing a gain of 13.98 per cent for the period of 10 years.

a See reports for Sandy Spring and Farmville, Bulletins Nos. 32 and 14.

The basis for the tax levy for 1899-1900, according to the statistics in the office of the county clerk, was: Realty, $713,398.91; personalty, $331,765; total, $1,045,163.91; and 2,129 polls. This basis yielded, at the rate of $0.90 per $100 of property and of $1 per poll, the sum of $11,535.48.

In 1899-1900 the county, according to the report of the county superintendent of schools, had 31 public schools and 32 schoolhouses, a colored school in one district being held in one schoolhouse for one half session and in another schoolhouse for the other half session. There were no graded schools. The average length for the yearly school session was 6.33 months. Of these schools, 19 were white, with 23 teachers, of whom 5 were males and 18 females; and 12 were colored schools, with 12 teachers, 3 males and 9 females. The average yearly salary of the teachers was $164.66, distributed as follows: White teachers, males, $183.66; females, $174.16. Colored teachers, males, $158.33; females, $142.50.

For these schools the county received for the session of 1899-1900 from the State school funds, $5,086.16; from the county school funds, $1,346.02; from the district funds, $1,646.94; from balances on hand and from other sources, (a) $1,271.36, a total of $9,350.48. Of this amount $6,904.95 was expended for the current expenses of public instruction, including $5,670, which went for teachers' salaries.

One incorporated academy for whites is reported, which was kept open during a nine-months' session, and had 5 teachers, 1 male and 4 females, and 73 pupils of both sexes.

The total realty of the county, as of record in the county clerk's office for the year ending June 30, 1900, was 80,434.39 acres, assessed at $713,398.91, of which 70,811.41 acres were owned by the whites, at an assessed valuation of $620,225.07, and 9,622.98 acres were owned by the Negroes, at an assessed valuation of $93,173.84. The total personal property of the county was assessed at $331,765, of which the whites owned $276,302, and the Negroes $55,463. It will be seen that the Negroes own nearly 12 per cent of the land of the county and

a One of these sources deserves to be mentioned particularly. It will be recalled that the struggle for religious freedom in Virginia, which went on during and immediately after the Revolutionary struggle for civil liberty, ended in 1802 in the passage of an act ordering the sale by the overseers of the poor of the glebes or farms belonging to what had been the Established Church. The money thus obtained in each parish was to be "appropriated to the poor of the parish, or to any other object which a majority of freeholders and housekeepers in the parish might by writing direct, provided that nothing should authorize an appropriation of it to any religious purpose whatever." The glebe fund thus derived in Lancaster County was put into the hands of trustees for the benefit of public education, and in 1899–1900, almost a century after its origin, yielded $563.87 for the use of the public schools. See "The Struggle for Religious Freedom in Virginia: The Baptists," by Wm. Taylor Thom, Series XVIII, Johns Hopkins University Studies, 1900.

about 13 per cent of its assessed value; and also that they own nearly 17 per cent of the assessed personalty. The realty owned by Negroes should probably be increased by at least 500 acres, in order to include lands bought and not yet recorded as transferred and lands in process of purchase. The proportion, especially of lands in process of purchase, may easily be much larger. For example, 6 of the families of the Litwalton neighborhood are reported as now buying 55 acres of land. In many cases the sellers withhold title until purchase money and interest have been all paid, and this process often extends over many years. Sometimes, of course, trust deeds are taken and title is conveyed

at once.

Twenty-four out of 49 property-holding families in the Litwalton neighborhood report their property as owned for 10 years or more, or as inherited; and of the remaining 25 families it is almost certain that the greater number were many years in paying before they got titles to their property. In other words, it is most probable that much the larger part of this real estate was bought by the Negroes before 1890, possibly even earlier. One intelligent Negro man was of the opinion that his people were acquiring land as rapidly now as at any time during the last 30 years; but that was not the opinion at the county clerk's office, nor of some well-informed white men, by whom it was held that the change in the conditions of the oyster industry had thrown less money into the hands of the Litwalton Negroes than was the case 15 or 20 years ago, and that, in consequence, they were acquiring land less rapidly.

That they hold at this time 12 per cent of the surface of the county and about 17 per cent of its assessed personalty, is, however, a noteworthy fact. They are assessed for something like one-sixth of the local taxes. They outnumber the whites in the proportion of 1,161 adult males to 1,068 adult males.

The record of the population during the century is of interest. The following table is taken from the census records:

POPULATION OF LANCASTER COUNTY, 1790 TO 1890.

The population did not reach the mark of 1790 again until 1880. It was lowest during the decades from 1820 to 1850, when the great

development of the West and South was attracting emigration. The Negroes have always outnumbered the whites from 500 to 1,000, though the increase of the population from 1870 to 1890 has been slightly in favor of the whites.

Tobacco, with its usual bad effects on the soil, was long the important crop in Lancaster County. Then wheat and corn, especially corn, were chiefly cultivated. During both of these periods the lands along the river front of the Rappahannock and on the big tide-water creeks were held by the wealthier families; and back in the interior-the forest-lived people not so well to do, all farmers, with slaves in varying proportion to their means. After the war of 1861-1865 began the exploitation of woods and waters. Lumbermen, employing many of the freedmen as laborers, stripped the land of timber and sold cord wood by the shipload. Then, also, the oyster dredgers began the destruction of the Rappahannock oyster beds or the native oyster "rock."

In this latter work of destruction they nearly succeeded, as they have done in Maryland oyster waters also. For many years, however, the oysters were so abundant and so fine that the oyster tongers could make high wages, better than the wages of the majority of skilled workmen, by getting up the finest oysters and selling them to the waiting vessels from Baltimore, Philadelphia, or New York, as the case might be. These men often averaged $5 a day for days at a time, and those who owned boats and could employ other men often averaged still more. The money came quickly and they spent it lavishly, many of them buying or beginning to buy, among other things, homes for themselves and their families. These homes were almost invariably located in the strip of land bordering on the Rappahannock and the native oyster rock. Along all the oyster rivers of Virginia and Maryland the whites have continued, with rare exceptions, to retain their hold on the river front and on the rich river bottoms. This strip of land varies, roughly speaking, from half a mile or a mile to a good deal more than that in width, and can not, as a rule, be bought by Negroes. Just back of this river belt the lands are not so valuable, but they are near enough to the water to enable the fishermen and the oyster tongers to go to and from their work conveniently and seasonably. In this section, accordingly, the Negroes have bought their lots and built their homes. Back of this section, again, are to be found the white farmers of the interior, some of them with large holdings of land and employing or trying to employ and to keep permanent families or squads of laborers. This habitat of the oyster Negro in Lancaster County, following the meanderings of the river and sandwiched between two sections of whites, may be likened to the layer of chocolate in a slice of chocolate cake. This comparison is said to hold true, by those in a position to know, for the oyster-bearing affluents of Chesapeake Bay in Maryland as well as in Virginia. There