Ancestry Magazine

Generally speaking, taxes were authorized at the colony or state level, but administered and collected at the local level. This is a boon to researchers who are working in counties with a record loss.

Finding Tax Records
Generally speaking, taxes were authorized at the colony or state level, but administered and collected at the local level. (In New England taxation was at the town level.) In many cases the detailed local tax lists were forwarded to the state as supporting documentation for the money collected. This is a boon to researchers who are working in counties with a record loss. Copies were also maintained at the county level. This gives you two opportunities to find the records. As is true with many genealogical records, one or both of the copies may have been destroyed, either deliberately because they were no longer needed or accidentally.

Tax lists for a single year are often published as substitutes for missing censuses, but what you hope to find in your research is a continuous run of tax lists so that you can follow your ancestral family over a long period of time. This means finding them in manuscript form, quite often microfilmed.

Tax records can begin early and continue into the twentieth century, but they don’t survive for all localities. Fortunately, they are available for states such as Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Texas, where we face problems tracking migrating ancestors. Other areas have valuable lists, but for a limited time period, a limited locality, or a limited scope (such as only for landowners), they are generally spotty. Useful tax rolls survive for many localities, so don’t assume that because your ancestor wasn’t in one of the above states you won’t find tax rolls. You just need to do some research on the records (see Resources for Finding Tax Lists).

Collecting Taxes
The process through which the rolls were created and the assets recorded varied. The county court was usually responsible for assigning assessors and defining geographical districts when a county was too large for one man to oversee.

The assessor was usually someone familiar with the neighborhood, and he often continued taking that roll for many years, his handwriting becoming familiar to us as we read year after year.

Lists are generally semi-alphabetical, arranged by the first letter of the last name. Occasionally, we find a list that is semi-alphabetical by first letter of first name. It made sense to the assessor, but can be a bit annoying to the researcher who hopes to rush through the tax entries for an ancestral family. It is apparent through studying many rolls that the basic list was often prepared in advance, based on the previous year. In other words, names often appear in the same order from year to year, and new names are added to the end of the list for that letter of the alphabet. Sometimes the assessor went to the taxpayer; sometimes the taxpayer came to a central location; sometimes there was a combination of both.

Occasionally rolls list names in seemingly random order. This may be, like the census, representative of the visits made to each house. Be cautious, however, because if the taxpayer came into the courthouse square to declare his assets, then the order is not useful.

Different localities organized their lists differently. For example, Virginia separated lists for real property (land) from those for personal property, but Kentucky combined everything onto one list. Pennsylvania had the unique structure of dividing the list into three sublists: one for property owners, one for married renters (usually headed “Inmates”), and one for single men (often headed “Free men”). Many lists have separate sections for delinquents, nonresident property owners, town dwellers, businesses, or special items such as business licenses. Entries for nonresidents may appear in the regular list under their name or the name of an overseer (no poll or tithe is counted for the owner). Technically, there were assessment lists and collection lists, but rarely do both survive.

Assessments were posted for taxpayers to review, and there was usually an appeal process. For example, a Pennsylvania roll stated that “the Day of Appeal is the First day of October next at the house of Caspar Snevly in Lebanon.” Appeals may be found in county court records, as when the Louisa County, Virginia, court orders note “Sheriff to remit to Thos. Almond his tax for the year 1785, he being under the age of twenty-one years.”

Who Was Taxed?
In general, we find tithable lists, personal property lists, and real property lists. The first two lists were very often combined. A tithe was not, as we consider it today, a contribution of a percentage of income. The term meant, instead, adult white males and slaves. Later lists sometimes use the word “poll,” which means “head.” Sometimes a tax was levied on each tithe or poll, but often tithable lists were a means of keeping track of who was (or might potentially be) of an age for military service or road work, and no tax was assessed on a per-person basis. The exact ages for eligibility varied somewhat over time, usually beginning at sixteen, eighteen, or twenty-one (check the column headings on the first page of the tax roll). Men were often exempted from the poll tax as they became too old for productive labor (sometimes there was a cutoff age, sometimes the collector or court made the decision on an individual basis).

Unfortunately, the tax rolls we find are often for land tax. This is a selective list and excludes many adult males, whereas tithable and personal property lists are much more inclusive, showing eve n the poorest residents.

Almost everyone, regardless of age, was taxed on the property they owned, with occasional exemptions for clergy and officials. Thus, we even find women on tax rolls. This most often occurs after the death of a husband with property such as land and slaves. It may be very brief, only one year, probably during the time period when the estate was being settled and distributed. This is one reason you want to read every year that is available. Occasionally, widows or single women with taxable property appeared on the rolls for many years.

Tax lists were used for a variety of statistical purposes. One example of unexpected information collected on tax lists is from Kentucky, which wanted to know the number and value of sheep killed by dogs. And one nineteenth-century Pennsylvania list named those persons who were deaf. In this instance, they all appeared to be from one family, suggesting an inherited, congenital disorder.

Learning About the Family
The items for which our ancestors were taxed varied over the years, with a few items being dropped from the assessment, but more being added. In general, taxable property fell into one of the following classifications:

• Land The acreage is usually given, often with additional information, such as the name of the waterway and land use (pasture, cultivated land, etc.). In public land states, the township, range, and section is listed; in towns, the lot number or size of the lot is provided. Eventually, buildings and improvements became subject to taxation.

• Slaves Occasionally the names of slaves are listed. This may help those researching African American ancestry, but it is even more likely to help those researching the slave-owning family, as slaves were often inherited, allowing you to identify potential links between generations.

• Livestock The year-by-year accounting of cattle, horses, mules, sheep, an d hogs provides a picture of the ancestral farm and the changes it went through.

• Income-producing items Tavern licenses, billiard tables, and stud fees (listed as “rate of covering”) are examples of this.

• Luxuries Watches and clocks were considered a luxury, as were certain kinds of carriages. A wagon, on the other hand, was an income-producing item as it could be hired out for cartage. Amount of cash or gold is found on some lists.

Thus we learn not only what our ancestor owned, but how that placed him in the community in which he resided. If your ancestor had one horse and two cows, don’t assume he was poorer than his neighbors. Look at the other entries on the page. He might have been very typical.

Solving Research Problems
In many localities, a man was responsible for the taxes of those residing in his household, including hired hands and his sons. A list may note only that he has three tithes, but sometimes it may list the tithes by name.

For localities in which there is a continuous run of tax rolls, we can determine birth order and approximate birth years of sons as we watch them appear one at a time, immediately following the name of the man who is likely their father. We can “see” them move out on their own, perhaps buying property or renting, often about the time they married. This typical life pattern may help us make sense of otherwise unconnected records.

We may learn of a death for which there is no pro bate, when William Wilson is no longer on the tax list, but “William Wilson est” [estate] or “Mary Wilson” appears with approximately the same property.

As family historians, we often struggle with the problem of keeping men of the same name separated. The tax collector of our ancestors’ times had the same problem. Many of them added identifiers to their lists to remind themselves of which man was which. It is common to find the following identifiers used on tax records:

• Relative age Designations such as “jr.” or “sr.” do not indicate relationship, just relative age.

• Occupation Many men had an auxiliary occupation, even if they were primarily farmers.

• Place of residence The name of a creek, mountain, or small settlement can help us place an ancestor in a limited locality, even if he did not own land. Often abbreviated, you will need to study the county to figure out that CC is Cripple Creek and NR is New River.

• Name of father Sometimes we are lucky and the record actually says “son of John,” providing proof that does not exist in vital records. However, the identification may be somewhat cryptic. In Loudoun County, Virginia, a man was listed as “son of potter” in 1783; in prior years the only potter was a Thomas, thereby providing the name of the father. The single letters J, A, and R written next to some names in Middlesex County, New Jersey, were baffling until analysis showed they were the collector’s notation for “son of Jacob,” “son of Aaron,” and “son of Reuben.”

• Physical characteristics Just as we do today, tax collectors described persons by their appearance, so we may occasionally find a notation for “little,” “tall,” “red” (hair), or even “CE” (cross-eyed).

These identifiers, or markers, tell us many details about our ancestral family. When used with other records, they can make genealogical connections that otherwise elude us.

Our goal in family history research is to find a document that says what we want it to say: that John Jones of Green County is the same man as John Jones of White County. Or that Jane Jones who married Henry Hill in White County is the daughter of John Jones. The reality is that often we cannot find such a document. When this happens, we must build a case based on the evidence we can find. Tax records often serve as the mortar that holds those pieces of evidence together.

Tax records provide supporting evidence for migration. If John Jones appeared on the tax rolls of Green County from 1785 to 1795 and then completely disappeared, and John Jones appeared on the tax rolls of White County beginning in 1796, we can say that this is likely the same man, given other records that also point this way. More importantly, if John Jones remained on the Green County tax rolls until 1799, this is not a valid ancestral migration.

Whether they are helping to solve difficult problems or providing details about our ancestors, tax records can be a rich resource for family historians.

Resources for Finding Tax Lists
• Use the online Family History Library Catalog at <www.familysearch.org>. Taxation is one of the headings in the Locality section. You will need to search at both the state and county level.

• Many tax rolls end up at state or regional archives, so check the website for the archives plus any books about research in the state.

• Individual tax lists are often abstracted in periodicals published by local genealogical societies. Use PERSI (the PERiodical Source Index ) to find them. Taxes is a heading within the Locality section. Read the introduction in the article to learn where the records are so you can access all of the years. Hint: If you can’t find anything on your county, try other counties. Those articles may educate you about tax lists for that state.

• If there is a tax roll published as a census substitute, read the introduction to learn where the tax rolls were obtained.

Patricia Law Hatcher, CG, FASG, is the author of Producing a Quality Family History and Locating Your Roots—Discover Your Ancestors Using Land Records. She is a frequent contributor to the Ancestry Daily News.