- categorising the wealth of ancestors, how to determine their status in colonial society Qualified appraisers assigned a value to items owned at the time of the deceased's death; status is determined by the extent of items required to service a dinner party of ten or more people; knives and forks, the more gentile items provide an indication of status and possibly wealth. I was particularly interested in applying the Gunston Hall Plantation methodology to Sarah Miers, wife of first Aaron Williams, son of Reynear, Kent, Delaware, and second Nehemiah Draper, a wealthy merchant of Cedar Creek Hundred, Sussex Delaware. She was a wife, mother, yeowoman and maintained a book of debtors and creditors. No books, it seems, filled the shelves of the bookcase in Sarah Miers home. No jewellry is listed nor clothes. Jewellry and clothing are two of the items I was interested in seeing, mainly to compare it with the jewellry and clothing Naomi Wiltbank devised in her will made 22 Septembe...