For Genealogists, Tax Records are GoodBy Connie Lenzen, CGSMAn article published in the 14 April 2005 issue of the Vancouver Columbian. |
Tax day is upon us. We moan and groan, but taxes are a fact of life. They
have been with us for centuries. The good part about them is that records
created to track tax payments are a wonderful source of information about
our ancestors
One of the earliest forms of taxation in this country was the quitrent. Landowners
paid a quitrent, a tax on real property, to the Crown or the proprietor. Records
known as rent rolls and debt books were created to track payments.
The poll tax was a fixed tax on white males and both male and female slaves.
The person who was subject to the tax was known as a tithable, a taxable,
or a poll. The minimum age at which the poll tax was levied varied from state
to state and from time to time. In some instances there was a maximum age
beyond which the tax was not levied.
Real property taxes were levied on land. The lists usually provide the name
of the person who owned the land and how many acres were being taxed. The
real property tax books often contain personal property information. This
ranges from how many sheep and cattle were owned and how many bushels of wheat
were harvested to items like numbers of carriages or watches.
Many tax books have been microfilmed and are in the Family History Library
catalog. Others are found in courthouses or local historical societies.
Federal income tax records are not available to researchers. However, there
are two Federal tax record groups we can use. One is the 1798 Direct Tax List,
sometimes called the Window Tax. The other is the income tax assessed on the
population during the Civil War.
The 1798 tax tells who owned the land and who lived on it. There is a physical
description and the assessed valuation of the property. The National Archives
(NARA) has microfilmed the records for Pennsylvania, and they are available
from NARA and the Family History Library. Records of varying amounts and arrangements
of the 1798 tax lists are in the custody of the following repositories: Connecticut
Historical Society; Historical Society of Delaware; Maryland Historical Society
(Maryland and the District of Columbia); New England Historic Genealogical
Society (Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire); Rhode Island Historical
Society; Tennessee State Library and Archives; and the Vermont Historical
Society.
There is a tax section on Cyndi’s List, online at www.cyndislist.com/taxes.htm.
It contains links to tax articles and abstracted tax lists.
© 2006
Connie Lenzen, CG
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