Tobacco was the crop of Virginia. To facilitate trade, tobacco, or tobacco receipts, were acceptable and legal mediums of exchange. To translate this into the equivalent currency amount requires a knowledge of the world price in tobacco. The price fluctuated depending on the size of the crop and the size of the market. The market size could change drastically since a large fraction of the tobacco shipped to England was re-exported to other European countries. If England was at war, this reduced the market. Like nearly all agricultural markets, an abundant crop was often accompanied by lower prices.
Rev. Stöver wrote once that his salary was 3000 pounds of tobacco (I assume this was an annual salary). In 1738, the average price of Rappahannock tobacco was 14 shillings per hundred weight. The church account (of the last few notes) valued 55 pounds of tobacco as just slightly more than 15 shillings per hundred weight, but his was in 1734. Thus, Stöver's salary was approximately 22 pounds in Virginia currency. We saw that a carpenter, John Huffman, earned two and one-half shillings per day. Working six days a week, this would be 15 shillings per week or about 39 pounds per year. Stöver had other fringe benefits. He probably could keep his wedding, baptismal, and funeral fees. These would have been significant. Also, he had the benefit of a farm supplied by the church.
In the previous paragraph, I used the phrase "Virginia currency". This was distinct from the sterling currency of England. Though the Virginia currency was meant to reflect the English sterling money, it sold at a discount. A pound in Virginia currency was not worth as much as a pound sterling.
The Church of England was the official church of the colony. It received the support of the colonial government. In return, it was to perform certain services for the State. Births were recorded by the church. The church was responsible for the poor and those unable to care for themselves. Each parish was administered by the vestrymen. They met and set the budget for the next year as a number of pounds of tobacco. Then they divided the expenses by the number of tithes in the parish. This was how much tobacco that each tithe had to pay during the year. If there were large expenditures, such as a church building, the cost could be spread among three years.
These tithes had to be paid by each eligible tithe in the parish. The Lutheran people had to pay the same tithe to the Church of England as the Anglicans did. Then if they wanted their own church, they had to pay for that in addition. In the Robinson River community, they felt they could not support both churches. So they decided to try to raise money in Europe.
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.