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40 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
Why so few children? The adult sex ratio would seem the most
likely culprit, for the number of women of childbearing age in a popula-
tion is one of the most important determinants of the birth rate. Among
Maryland slaves, however, its influence seems relatively minor. If the
excess men are excluded, the ratio of children to adults increases to .596,
suggesting that even if the sex ratio were equal the population would
still have registered a net natural decline, especially if many of the children
were immigrants. On plantations with a sex ratio of one, the ratio of
children to adults was .500, barely an improvement over that in the ag-
gregate population. Sexual imbalance among adults seems an insufficient
explanation of the small proportion of children in the slave population.28
Perhaps there were so few children because the slave women found
in inventories were recent immigrants who had not been in the colony
long enough to bear many children. No doubt this had some depressing
effect on the number of children, but, like the sex ratio, it seems a relatively
minor influence. In an attempt to obtain a rough estimate of the effect
of the number of years slaves had been in Maryland on the proportion of
children appearing in inventories, I have examined the biographies of de-
cedents to identify those who had inherited slaves. Thirteen such men
were identified. Presumably the in adult slaves found in their inventories
had been in Maryland longer than most blacks. The ratio of children
to adults among these slaves was .580, only slightly higher than that in the
aggregate population. Moreover, the sex ratio among children in the
inventories of men who had inherited slaves was 2.733, suggesting that
the higher proportion of children on their estates resulted more from
purchases than from births. This is not an entirely satisfactory test, but
it does suggest that the number of years slave women had been in Mary-
land is of little importance in accounting for the small proportion of
children. The profile of the population found in inventories between
1691 and 1700, a period characterized both by heavy black immigration
and by a relatively high ratio of children to adults, lends additional weight
to this conclusion.29 The age structure of the slave population in the four-
B. Greene and Virginia Harrington, comps., American Population before the Federal
Census of i/go (New York, 1932), 96-97. In compiling population estimates for
Historical Statistics, Stella H. Sutherland apparently assumed that Virginia's slave
population experienced a natural decline in the early i8th century. Cf. series 214
with Z294-297.
2S Roughly equal sex ratios among black adults did not result in natural increase
in the West Indies. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, 316.
29 For slaves brought to Maryland in the 16905 see above, n. 5. If the inter-
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