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32 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
TABLE I
PROFILE OF SLAVES IN CALVERT, CHARLES, PRINCE GEORGE'S,
AND ST. MARY'S COUNTIES, MARYLAND, 1658 TO 1710
1658-
1671-
1681-
1691-
1701-
1658-
1670
1680
1690
1700
1710
1710
Males 0-15
3
13
21
52
88
177
Females (1-15
s
f,
11
A ?.
62
126
Sex ratio
.60
2. 167
1.909
1.238
1.419
1.405
Sex unknown 0- 15
6
16
25
49
34
130
Total 0-15
14
35
57
143
184
•133
Hales 16-50
17
48
74
145
241
525
Females 16-50
13
40
54
100
156
.363
Sex ratio
1.308
1.200
1.370
1.450
1.545
1.446
Old males
1
2
7
12
19
41
Old females
6
10
15
1 8
26
75
Sex ratio
.167
.200
.467
.667
.731
.547
Old sex unknown
0
0
0
4
3
7
Total old
7
12
22
34
48
123
Slaves, age, sex unknown
3
->2
31
63
55
174
total slaves 54
ratio 0-15/16-50 .467
ratio 0-IS/females
16-50 1.077
ratio females 0-15a,/
females 16-50 .615
157
485
684
.435
1.430
.665
.506
1618
1.193
" Assuming that V2 of the children not identified by sex were females.
sion between working adults and old slaves is imprecise; I may have
incorrectly counted as "old" several slaves who were still in their forties.
Despite this imprecision at the edges, the results provide a useful profile
of the slave population in southern Maryland during the seventeenth
century (see Table I).7
" Throughout this essay I assume that the sex and age profile of the slaves owned
by inventoried decedents did not differ in any important respect from that of the
slave population as a whole. Unfortunately, the available evidence does not provide
an opportunity to test this assumption for the lyth century. However, I did test it
against the 1755 census. The sex ratio among adult slaves appearing in Charles
County inventories taken in 1755 was 1.22; in the census it was 1.27. The ratio
of children to adults in inventories was i.oo; in the census it was i.io. Charles
County Inventories, 4, 1753-1766; Gentleman's Magazine, and Historical Chronicle,
XXXIV (1764), 261. Allan Kulikoff has compared the sex and age distributions
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