Sue - thank you for that information!! I had just figured they were still using the British pound. I will look that up! Nancy In a message dated 7/5/2008 11:44:16 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, SCa1390698@aol.com writes: If you search for United States dollar on Wikipedia there is a good explanation of the history of the dollar and when it was first minted. Also, consider that the pound that was used to purchase the land was a Colonial pound issued by one of the states and not US currency or the British pound. Sue **************Gas prices getting you down? Search AOL Autos for fuel-efficient used cars. (http://autos.aol.com/used?ncid=aolaut00050000000007)

With the caveat that I am NOT an expert in this... Around the time of the Rev. War and for about 30 to 40 years afterwards, I have seen references in notary documents in Canada to both pounds and to dollars, both in the same time frame, suggesting a coexistence. The pound in Canada was the Halifax pound - Halifax being the center of the British authority at that time. Whether this carried over into the American colonies I'm not sure. I also recall seeing references to the Spanish 'dollar' as currency. I thought that the currencies at that time were linked to the value of gold and that silver coins, for example, basically contained the appropriate value in silver content. This allowed them to be cut into smaller portions and used in trade. If you are trying to asses the relative value of the land, a better approach might be to compare to the cost of other items of daily life, or to typical earnings. Inventories associated with Wills are one source. I have some ledgers from 1799 with several snippets in them like: "one plough - 4 shillings". (20 shillings to one pound). "1 and a half days work on last year's harvest - 3 shillings and nine pence". (12 pence to one shilling.) "One days work with yourself and oxen - 9 shillings". "1/2 pint rum - one shilling". "1/2 bushel wheat - 2 shillings and five pence". --- With respect to more modern conversions of pounds to dollars, when I first emigrated to the USA from England in the 1970s, the British pound was worth approximately 2.5 dollars. It went as low as about 1.5 dollars in the 1980s and currently exchanges for approximately 2 dollars to the pound. (My pension typically converts at around 1.97 dollars). As a child, the English 5 shilling piece (called a "crown") was often colloquially referred to as a dollar, suggesting an exchange rate of four dollars to the pound. However, I suspect that was no more than a historical hangover from times long past as I doubt that there were four dollars to the pound anytime since the second world war as England was pretty broke following that.