Definition
A charre of lead is a historical unit of measure for lead, consisting of 36 pigs of lead, with each pig weighing approximately 70 pounds. The full charre therefore amounted to roughly 2,520 pounds of lead. The term functioned as a standardized commercial quantity used in trade, contracts, and legal instruments involving the sale or transfer of lead as a commodity.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Charre" does not appear as a standard modern English word. It is archaic and has no recognized entry in contemporary general dictionaries.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 does not record "charre" as a standard English term. "Pig" in the metallurgical sense refers to an oblong mass of smelted metal as cast from the furnace.
The term is pure trade terminology from the lead and mining industries, absorbed into legal usage through commercial and conveyancing practice. A modern researcher encountering "charre" in a historical document should not assume any connection to the word "char" (to burn) — the terms are unrelated.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term belongs to the specialized vocabulary of historical weights and measures that appeared regularly in English and early American commercial law, mining law, and property conveyances. Researchers working with pre-twentieth-century contracts, estate inventories, mining leases, or trade agreements involving lead will encounter charre alongside other archaic units of measure. Its precise legal significance lay in the standardized quantity it fixed — a charre established a contractual unit with a known weight, providing certainty in commercial dealings before modern standardized weights and measures statutes.
A key research trap: because "charre" appears in Black's Law Dictionary in entries that begin with extraneous case citation text (visible in the second edition entry, which opens with an apparent typographical carryover from an adjacent entry), researchers should be alert to the possibility that historical dictionary versions in digitized corpora may have corruption or misattribution around this entry. The substantive definition itself — 36 pigs at roughly 70 pounds each — is consistent across both Black's editions and should be treated as authoritative for the unit's meaning.
The term will surface most frequently in English legal sources, mining records of the lead-producing regions of Britain, and in American jurisdictions with significant early lead mining industries, including Missouri, Illinois, and Kentucky. The Kentucky Female Orphan School v. Louisville citation appearing in the second edition of Black's near this entry suggests the surrounding material involved municipal or property tax contexts, reinforcing that lead as a commodity had legal valuation significance well into the late nineteenth century.
Researchers should not conflate the historical charre with modern lead weight measurements for purposes of toxic tort or environmental analysis. The charre is purely a historical commercial unit with no operative meaning in contemporary lead regulation or liability frameworks.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's Law Dictionary define the term identically in substance: 36 pigs of lead, each pig approximately 70 pounds. The first edition provides the clean definition without surrounding text. The second edition appears to carry typographical residue from an adjacent entry at the opening of the definition block, which may cause confusion in digitized versions of the corpus.
Neither edition provides historical sourcing, etymology, or statutory authority for the unit — a characteristic gap of historical legal dictionaries when dealing with trade weights. The definition reflects trade custom rather than statutory standardization. Researchers requiring authoritative historical weight definitions should consult period mining treatises or English commercial law sources, as Black's provides only the unit's basic specifications without contextual grounding.
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Jurisdictional Note
The charre of lead is a term of English legal and commercial origin. In American legal sources it appears principally in connection with early domestic lead mining regions. It carries no operative legal meaning in any modern jurisdiction and functions solely as a term of historical interpretation.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
For researchers encountering charre in contexts that bridge into modern liability or regulatory issues involving lead:
The Law Mind Torts & Personal Injury Encyclopedia: Lead Paint and Lead Poisoning Liability (torts_185)
The Law Mind Environmental & Energy Law Encyclopedia: TSCA Specific Substances — PCBs, Asbestos, Lead-Based Paint, and PFAS (environmental_32)
Note: these encyclopedia entries address modern lead liability and regulation, not the historical trade unit. The connection is the subject matter of lead as a substance, not the legal concept of the charre itself.
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