LOWER-DELMARVA-ROOTS-L Archives

From: "craig o'donnell" <>
Subject: [LDR] Customs & Ports
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 09:40:23 -0500
References: <200312041202.hB4C2XRA010444@lists5.rootsweb.com>
In-Reply-To: <200312041202.hB4C2XRA010444@lists5.rootsweb.com>

>I understand what you are saying regarding the lack of use of official ports
>to avoid taxes on goods, like fine French brandy and just about anything,
>unless our joint ancestor Wm Fassit, a customs agent you tell me, caught
>them in
>the act (did he ever? or maybe did he look away? did he like French brandy?).

I don't know. He did have a Scrutoire, according to his will.

It wasn't so much a question of avoiding taxes, etc, or smuggling per se.
It was that the population was dispersed over a wide region with many of
them having deep water at their doorstep.

The way the English Customs was set up is very difficult to understand and
I'm not sure that I understand it well. There were three or four layers of
bureaucrats checking on one another. In theory this was also true in the
Colonies though in practice it seems it was not, and a Customs Collector
and an Auditor seems to have been the deepest bureaucracy that was
workable. Many times there was one guy for a large area. Wm Fassit's title
was if I recalll right "Riding Surveyor" which means he would travel around
and check records. His beat was "Sea Side and Monie" which means
essentially the seacoast, Snow Hill, and lower Eastern Shore Maryland.
Monie and Manokin were busy spots in the earliest days. "Busy" being a
relative term. So he may have checked records and submitted copies of same
to London where the real bureaucracy checked this against THEIR records. I
don't know. Whta I do know is that it was a terrible system that apparently
makes the IRS look like a Dick and Jane reader, and in the Colonies at
least seems never to have paid its own way!

So much of the actual Customs work probably took place in London. Lords
Balto may have wanted ports, not to collect customs, but rather to
centralize taxation on tobacco &c grown in Maryland. If you had to being
your 100 hogsheads of tob'o to the County Wharf to ship it was easy to
count them and arrive at 100, as opposed to the grower's claim which might
otherwise be, "ummmm, 78-1/2".

Whether Wm F submitted any $$ to the mother country I don't know. The only
reason we know666666 <--number of the beast, our cat, Littleton Dennis
Teackle <-- we know about him is that he was paid and copies of pay
vouchers were kept in the Exchequer records.

Randy Revel may have had a real "operation" going, but from the description
it sounds like nothing more than a large plantation to me. Remember that Wm
Claiborne had as big, or bigger, operations on Kent Island beginning in
about 1630. I think this simply bears out my point: towns were unnecessary
to the Colonial inhabitants.

As far as enforcing customs rules, at this distance I'm not so sure we can
trust the records, especially concerning anyone who was a buddy of Ed
Scarborough. In the late 1600s, if you could kick ass on someone to get
your way, you did so, and you got with your fellows who made you a justice
so you could fine people as you pleased.

As far as people arriving places, I think you basically had two options.

1. Someone paid your way and he/she was already in Virginia. Therefore you
got off at their plantation or the nearest handy commercial center.

2. Someone paid your way and they were on the boat with you. If it was a
settler, you'd be bound wherever they were bound to claim some land. If it
was the ship captain, I imagine he'd point you out at each stop he made
until someone paid for your contract and then you worked for them...



--
Craig O'Donnell
Sinepuxent Ancestors & Boats
<http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~fassitt/>;
The Proa FAQ <http://boat-links.com/proafaq.html>;
The Cheap Pages <http://www.friend.ly.net/~dadadata/>;
Sailing Canoes, Polytarp Sails, Bamboo, Chinese Junks,
American Proas, the Bolger Boat Honor Roll,
Plywood Boats, Bamboo Rafts, &c.
_________________________________

-- Professor of Boatology -- Junkomologist
-- Macintosh kinda guy
Friend of Wanda the Wonder Cat, 1991-1997.
_________________________________

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• [LDR] Customs & Ports by "craig o'donnell" <>