Category Archives: Tax Records

Tax Records

Using Tax Records in Genealogy Research

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Tax records, although not available for every year and every location, are one of my favorite record sets when doing genealogical research because those lists of people and property can tell so much about the lives of our ancestors.

I’ve mentioned tax records in the past, but I believe they are still a much underused set of records, so they are being spotlighted in today’s post.

Why Are Tax Records an Underused Resource?

Tax records are often overlooked by researchers for several reasons. First, researchers aren’t even aware of the accessibility of tax records. Second, if one/many land deeds have been located for a particular person or family, then what else is to be learned? Third, a researcher may be “aware” of the existence of tax records, but unsure how to go about locating them.

What Additional Information Can Be Gleaned from Tax Records?

Let’s start with where tax records are housed and where to find them for research purposes. Yes, towns assess taxes, but, generally speaking, tax records are kept at the county level.

For genealogy purposes, I’ve seen a few tax record sets on Ancestry, but the #1 website to find them is FamilySearch. In terms of the time frames, I have come across a few tax records from the 1600s, more from the 1700s, and plentiful supplies of records from many U.S. counties dating in the 1800s. Online access to 20th century tax records seems to be limited, possibly due to county permission restrictions when volunteers came to film records. In addition, some digitized records on FamilySearch are locked – meaning one has to view them in a FamilySearch Center or in the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City.

One such example is Passaic County, New Jersey records:

Notice that the years are quite limited – 1778-1822 – but, given that New Jersey federal censuses are LOST – GONE – DESTROYED – NONEXISTENT from 1790 through 1820, these tax records suddenly become extremely important as census substitutes. If I had ancestors here this early (Mine didn’t arrive in Passaic County until the 1890s), a trip to my local FamilySearch Center would be at the top of my list.

How Else Can Tax Records Be Used?

I have used tax records to determine the approximate arrival of an ancestor in a county, as with Martin Miller, who left Botetourt County, Virginia after 1810 and settled in Muhlenburg County, Kentucky before 1820. Taxes were usually collected in the spring and settlers generally migrated in spring and summer, so Martin probably arrived in Muhlenburg County sometime during 1811 as he was enumerated on 6 August 1810 in Botetourt County.

Tax records are extremely handy when trying to separate out two or more men of the same name. Lawrence Thompson, one of my husband’s ancestors, was a thorny problem until the tax records were closely examined in the counties where the extended Thompson families lived.

Tax records, second only to the sale inventories of a deceased person’s estate, can shed light on the wealth of an individual because taxes were collected not only on real property, i.e. land, but also on personal property. Items commonly taxed were horses, cows, sheep and even four-wheeled carriages. Enslaved persons also generated tax for a county and, occasionally, they were eve listed by name, rather than just by age and sex, in tax records.

Cumberland County, Virginia has digitized tax records from 1782-1844, unlocked, on FamilySearch. In those tax lists, I found a collateral ancestor of my husband, Samuel Williams, who paid taxes in 1783 and whose personal property included 12 enslaved persons.

Have you ever searched for a probate record, only to learn that the courthouse burned and there are no surviving probate files in the time period you need? If the tax records for that time period are extant, check them for entries such as “Smith, John, est.,” which indicates that the estate of John Smith paid X amount in taxes that year. Backtrack the years in the tax lists to determine exactly when the “estate” began being charged. Your John Smith would have died sometime in the preceding year. Lacking a death certificate or probate record, this tax entry might be the only way to pinpoint a man’s death, aside from disappearing from census records.

Lastly, do you need to build a FAN (Friends, Associates, Neighbors) Club? Tax records are fabulous for that! You can not only learn the names of all the males living in the county who share one surname, by following several years of records, a determination can be made as to when a male reached a taxable age (16, 18 or 21, depending on local laws) and first appears on a list.

Most tax records also include details about where the land was located that each person owned. If your family is found, say on Montgomery Creek, look at every name found in the county for that tax year and compile a list of everyone whose land was located in the Montgomery Creek area. Voila! An instant FAN club!

I hope these tips will encourage you to expand your genealogy resources toolbox if you aren’t already using tax records in your research.

Tax Records

8 Ways Tax Records Can Help Your Genealogy Research

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Tax records are a genealogy resource that are rich in information, but underused by most people. Why? Probably because they are rarely indexed to appear in search engines and researchers don’t take the time to manually dig down into catalogs.

This should sound familiar if you’ve been reading my posts since two days ago, I commented on what can be found in unindexed court records! There is definitely a theme running through my recent posts.

What kind of information is found in the tax rolls?

What you will learn about your ancestor will depend on what the local authorities deemed taxable at a given time and place.

1. At the very minimum, there will be a list of persons, usually men, taxed in the community. Most of the time, tax lists are assembled alphabetically, but only by the first letter of the surname. Therefore, tax lists won’t help assembling a FAN (Friends, Associates, Neighbors) club, but will show you, at a glance, all the households with a common surname.

2. A tax list might have an entry that looks like this: Smith, John est. That is a clear tip off that John Smith has died and his estate paid a tax. In the absence of vital records and/or gravestones, a researcher can narrow the year of death based on when the estate made its first appearance on the rolls. If there were minor children and the estate remained open over several years, it will make multiple appearances on the rolls.

3. Settlers generally became taxable the year after their arrival in a particular location. If someone first appears in the area, say in 1814, he likely arrived sometime during 1813. If your family moved from one county to another or one state to another, tax records can be used to document arrivals and departures.

4. Women occasionally appear on the tax rolls. Why? Undoubtedly because their husbands died and females became the head of household and had to pay any taxes due. Again, a death date can be estimated by the year based on when a widow pays taxes instead of her husband. (Be careful, though, as the death year of a female paying taxes can’t necessarily be estimated based on when she no longer is taxed. That’s because widows often moved into the household of an adult child.)

5. So far, I’ve talked about taxes where only a single tax was due, often for real estate. However, local taxes often included males over 16. Are you researching a family with children? If so, and there are no birth records, you may estimate a birth year for sons in the family if males appear on the tax roll their fathers’ households. That’s a signal that they are now 16 years old. Note that some counties included the number of tithables in a household, e.g. John Smith with 3 tithables, followed a couple of years later by John Smith with 3 polls, meaning two sons reached the age to be included on the tax list.

6. Tax rolls may included not only the number of acres owned by someone, but also the area of the county where the land was located. This provides a second aid in determining land that passed ownership or possibly even if there were two or more unrelated families with the same surname living in the county.

7. Local governments soon decided that tax categories needed to be expanded to raise more money. Therefore,  how many acres of land owned, the basic component of a tax list, soon saw the addition to how many sheep, cattle, cows, horses, pigs and other animals were owned. I’ve even seen a tax list that taxed wheels (as in wagon wheels) because in the early days, you were quite well off if you owned a wagon in addition to horses.

8. Southern tax lists in times of war – both the American Revolution and the Civil War – included lists of enslaved persons, both male and female. Sometimes, ages of each person were also included.

Are you ready to start reading those tax rolls? The best online resource is FamilySearch. Do a county and state search in the catalog and then scroll down the list to TAXATION to see what is available for your place of interest.

 

Tax Records, The Slave Name Roll Project, Williams

52 Documents in 52 Weeks #38: Slaves Named on 1783 Cumberland County, Virginia Tax Roll

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Recently, while working through my Mary Williams Love puzzle, she being the daughter of Samuel Williams, I decided to take another look at records for Samuel, who died in 1823. He is not my husband’s direct line. In fact, his presumed father, Thomas, was the brother of my husband’s Mathias Williams, so the cousin link is quite a bit removed in the past.

I also have made contributions to Schalene Dagutis’s The Slave Name Roll Project, which she created in February 2015. While researching my husband’s lines in the American South, I frequently come across records of enslaved people and I blog about these discoveries.

Samuel Williams was a wealthy man for his time, although much of his wealth unfortunately was based on being a slave owner. Samuel’s 1823 will made mention of old and infirm slaves and Samuel’s desire that his slaves who had families not be sold out of the neighborhood, but he did not name a single slave.

I decided to take another look at the Personal Property Tax list for Cumberland County, Virginia, where Samuel Williams lived. Those tax rolls survive all the way back to 1782!

For most of the years at which I looked, the tax list only included numbers, e.g., # of white tithables over 21, # of slaves over 21, # of slaves aged 16-21, # of horses, # of cattle and acreage owned.

However, the 1783 list was much more detailed. I found a list of all tithable males, but a separate list which actually named each of the slave owners and the names of their slaves. Here is Samuel Williams’ listing:

Samuel Williams, himself, Neptune, Peter, Peg, Aggy, Sarah,
Hannah, 6 – Moll, Bella, Nancy, Jacob, Jos? or Jas?, 5

Samuel passed away 40 years later, but he referenced his old, infirm slaves. It is possible that some of the people on this list were living in 1823.

Here is a sample of part of one of the W pages:


Men with Surnames Beginning with W on the 1783
Cumberland County, Virginia Personal Property Tax Roll

If you believe that an enslaved ancestor of yours might have lived in Cumberland County, Virginia, you should check the tax rolls to see if, by chance, he/she is named on those rolls. Most of the pages I looked at were quite readable and they are on microfilm in the Family History Library. (Years 1782-1816 = Film #2,024,521, 1817-1836 = Film #2,024,522, 1837-1844 = Film #2,024,523).