Can Anyone Identify This Document?

It's a little hard to read. It appears to be some sort of a contract for farm land published in 1828 in Pennsylvania. Is this a deed? What is it called? Are any of the sames in this document known or familiar? Any information would help. Thanks in advance.

 

It's a sharecropper agreement. Philip is renting a field from John for a year, in return for a 3rd of the grain. Also a sum of $50 to be paid to the Philip for the services of thrashing and to spread the waste back on the field.

 

Do any of the names in this agreement seem familiar? Or were these just ordinary citizens forming an agreement?

 

less than ordinary ........

 

The term "sharecropper" wouldn't have occurred to me, but that's what it is. An interesting document, but no idea if it has any value. There were a lot of sharecroppers and, no doubt, a lot of similar documents. Mechanized farming largely diminished the practice.

 

Also, it is a contemporary copy of the agreement as shown by the seals being drawn on representations rather than than the actual wax seals.

 

And by "contemporary" you mean the copy was made during a general time range contemporary to the time the original document was written, right? Just trying to clarify for others who may be reading this.

 

@Figtree3 - yes, it seems like a copy made in the same general time period as the original.

 

What!? They didn't have copy machines back then?

 

Would be of great interest to their descendants.

Debora

 

Well, Thomas Jefferson did make this, but it didn't really take off.

 

Awesome! I wish I had thought of that!

 

Misspellings are very common on old documents. Note that the last names of both are spelled differently. Even the name of this small town is.

 

Spellings weren't standardized in the USA for another 40 years or so. I'm not really surprised about the mis-spellings.

 

That is what I am trying to figure out. Are these "sharecropper agreements" collectable? I can't find much information on them especially something dated this far back. I think it mentioned "horses and Africans" which indicates they may have been slaves or maybe paid laborers. But if they were slaves wouldn't they just call them slaves? I think there is more to this document that I would like to find out about.

 

Not necessarily; IIRC "Africans" was just another way of saying slaves.

 

@eastcoaster - Where did it mention "horses and Africans"? I didn't see anything like that in the document.
I know that old deeds and such are collectible, but my impression is that folks like the ones with the nice script, seals, and official doodadery on them. And being on velum is good too.
I imagine that making agreements to rent farmland for a share of the crop has been going on for many centuries. And I think it still goes on, although not like the image we have of sharecropping of old. My great uncle was a sharecropper (the old fashioned kind) in the 1930's.

 

I think it mentions it twice. I circled them.
That makes sense but for one to survive from 1828? I looked but haven't seen anything like this.

 

I'm pretty sure that sentence reads "...doth let unto the said Philip Rishal his heirs and assigns two fields situated in...". It's standard language that means what he gets out of the agreement goes to his heirs at his passing, and can be assigned to someone else. I've spent a lot of time reading 18th and 19th century script. When there are two 's' letters together, the first one is written like an f, and the second one like an s. Jesse, for example would look like Jefse or Jepe (the the first and second s together sometimes looks like a p).

 

The circled places say "assigns" and "heirs and assigns." Handwriting was different then.