York County Probate Records 1700-1800

If society drew a distinction between a man’s world and his work and a woman’s world and her work, then it may have associated different goods with the different worlds. This could have created ‘men’s possessions’ and ‘women’s possessions,’ ascribing gender to material objects.

Acting within this set of cultural assumptions, probate appraisers might have wittingly or unwittingly inventoried estates differently on the basis of female involvement with the estate. We used the York County Estate Inventories that are available through the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation at research.history.org/DigitalLibrary/inventories/. Over the 101 years to which we restricted ourselves (1700-1800, inclusive), we obtained 693 usable inventories.