1755 Maryland

1755- Maryland is a plantation colony, with tobacco dominating the provincial economy. European demands for tobacco provoke the colonists to increase production. Most of Maryland's inhabitants make their living working on their own or someone else's plantation.

Tobacco is a labor-intensive crop. Each slave or indentured servant working on a tobacco plantation in colonial days may have planted and weeded about two acres of cleared land with 10,000 plants a year, requiring bending over perhaps 50,000 times.

40% of the population is black, however not all of these persons were enslaved. For one reason, it was not uncommon for the landowner to free mulatto children in his will.