>>> "Gregory Powers" <powersrarebooks@mediaone.net> 12/11/00 01:15PM >>>
So my last clue is the price of tickets, which are given as "Boxes 4s 6d,
Pit 3s." That, if I'm not mistaken, is shillings and pence. I could
believe, although it seems unlikely, that Americans were still using
British currency designations as late as 1797, except that in Weldon
Durham's book, "American Theatre Companies 1749-1887," he gives the prices
for a contemporary performance in Boston (1795) as one dollar, 75 cents,
and 50 cents.
In my genealogical research, looking through estate files in western Pennsylvania for several years after the Revolution, I have often found accounts done in British currency units; sometimes there are accounts in which some of the money is figured in British units and some in dollars and cents.
Christine Crawford-Oppenheimer
Special Collections Librarian/Archivist
Culinary Institute of America