Back In Time to Barter

Forget Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, or even baseball cards. When it comes to trading, rabbit skins and a yoke of oxen rule.

To cap off a year of learning about colonial America, fourth grade students from Cider Mill School learned the intricacies of bartering. The new interactive lesson at the Wilton Historical Society was added as a way to tie the curriculum to the community.

"We provided them with things that actually occurred in Wilton," said Kate Gluckin of the Wilton Historical Society. "The only thing that has changed is the exchange. We've turned into a cash economy. But we still face the same choices – to go into debt."

More than 300 ten-year-olds marched through the historical society last week. They learned how Wilton's economy once functioned at a time when coin money was rare and paper money was unstable.

"They learned how one traded for the manufactured goods you needed, such as tea, coffee, and pins, without money," said Glucken.

In the eighteenth century, people bought whatever surplus goods they had in to a store. Each good had an ascribed value which the shopkeeper assigned credit.

Surprisingly it wasn't always a direct barter, said Kate Gluckin. It wasn't often that one farmer had something another farmer wanted.

Farmers traded with a town storekeeper who would have interacted with a town merchant, perhaps located in the Port of Norwalk. That merchant interacted with a city merchant who traded globally, with spice sellers in the West Indies and furniture makers in Europe.

At that time the British Crown took raw materials from the colonies, shipped them to England, and then sold finished goods back to the colonies.

"They learned there was no money and so it was interesting watching the circle of somebody getting what they needed to survive," said Trish Howell, one of the fourth grade teachers at Cider Mill.  "It was an important new element to learning about Colonial America."

The children represented four families who actually lived in Wilton during the 1700s. There was a miller, a weaver, a farmer, and a town merchant. The name of an actual store that existed in Wilton represented the trading station.

Captain Samuel Belden maintained the store on the northwest corner where Danbury Road intersects with Old Highway. Today the Baptist Church stands on the ground.

Aside from posting public notices, the store also held the public whipping post and stocks. Belden kept the store throughout the Revolution, despite his Loyalist leanings.

"He learned not to mix business with politics," Gluckin said.

Students arrived with a list of what they could trade and its worth and a list of items they wanted to buy. To keep an element of surprise, students weren't told the price of their wish list until they got to the store.

Students representing the Jabel Sturges family arrived with a list that included ten pounds of cheese worth five shillings, five pounds of butter worth one shilling and eight pence, and one day's labor with yoke oxen worth nine shillings, and three rabbit skins worth one shilling.

The family hoped to buy one pair of wool cards, five yards of calico, one ounce of cinnamon, ¼ pound of raisins, one hoe, and ¼ pound of gunpowder.

The values were true to the period. Each item had a trading card with a value on it and a picture of the item.

"When they got to the store they found out the goods cost more.  If you had ten children, do you buy the coffee or the cloth?" Gluckin asked. "What the kids traded and how you paid it off was interesting. I had no idea what the students would do. It was absolutely fascinating to watch. "