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Some months back, I mentioned on this list that
while looking through probate inventories, I had
found what seemed to be a gun merchant in Plymouth,
a man named Thomas Willett, with at least
10 guns of his own, and another 28 guns in his
business inventory.
As I was going back through my book, checking
accuracy of various statistical measures, I rechecked
all of my purchase records and probate inventory
spreadsheets against original documents where I
had them, and sent off for copies for the small
number of records that I did not have photocopies of
(largely from the very beginning of my research,
before I realized that I needed photocopies of everything
I cited). I had misread Willett's probate
inventory; this was not a business
inventory. He had 38 guns of
his own, with an average value of 1.85 pounds per gun.
Willett was one of the wealthier men in New England--a person of considerable political
significance. This
vast number of guns
in a single household appears to reflect two different factors:
1. He was rich, and like rich people today, tended
to own more guns than average.
2. Like many people in Plymouth at the time, there
being no banks, the easiest way to maintain
considerable wealth was to keep it in
valuables--rather like people that grew up during the Depression,
and learned not to trust banks, tended to keep
sizeable amounts of cash around the house.
Clayton E. Cramer
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