Hogshead

As a liquid measure the English hogshead held 63 wine gallons, but in American use the word often meant any large cask, commonly holding 100 to 140 gallons.

The tobacco hogshead was the standard package of the colonial tobacco trade. Virginia law required each to weigh at least 950 pounds, and planters rolled them along rolling roads to inspection warehouses, where inspectors weighed and stamped them. Inventories that list hogsheads of tobacco are recording a planter's main crop.