The Cousin Collector

I was chatting with Monica via email the other day. She was telling me that some family property was sold in the early 1900s and it resulted in only $500. I was thinking, considering how many people had to share that, it was hardly worth fighting for — she said they each received maybe $20.

I was suddenly reminded that what is “only” to us today might have actually been quite a lot 100+ years ago, and set about looking for a currency converter. Turns out, in today’s dollars, the sale brought in about $12,500 and each heir would have received about $500. Now we’re talking some money for most of us.

That reminded me of a distribution for one of “my” families in the 1880s. I haven’t yet figured out where that money came from, but it was a total of $2,000, $50,000 in today’s dollars. Now . . . [Yes! There’s more!]