How to Use Tax Lists for Research
Tax lists can be useful in several ways:
- Establishing residence. The appearance of a person’s name on a tax list provides evidence that the person was taxable in that township during the year recorded. Comparing successive lists can help establish when a family arrived in an area or when it may have departed.
- Distinguishing people with similar names. Comparing names, dates, locations, property holdings, and designations such as Senior and Junior may help differentiate individuals who shared a name.
- Identifying possible family relationships. People with the same surname appearing on successive lists, or near one another, may be related. Changes in ownership or the appearance of younger men on later lists can provide clues, although relationships must be confirmed through other records.
- Understanding property and economic circumstances. Some lists record acreage, buildings, livestock, servants, and tax assessments. These details provide a glimpse into a household’s resources and agricultural activities.
- Locating additional records. Tax entries can suggest where to search for deeds, wills, estate inventories, court proceedings, and church records.
Understanding Tax Categories
Early Pennsylvania tax lists sometimes distinguish between landholders, freemen, inmates, and single men.
Landholders were individuals assessed for taxable land or other property. Appearing as a landholder does not necessarily establish outright ownership; deeds and other property records should be consulted.
Freemen generally referred to unmarried adult men who were taxable in their own right, often without substantial landholdings. The term did not necessarily mean they had recently become free from servitude.
Inmates were individuals residing in another person’s household or on another person’s property, rather than maintaining a separately assessed landed estate. In this historical context, the word does not mean prisoners.
Single men were unmarried men who could be subject to a separate tax assessment. Some tax lists record this assessment in addition to taxes on their property.
These categories and their application changed over time, so they should be interpreted in the context of the particular tax law and assessment year.
Important Limitations
A tax list is not a complete census of everyone living in a township. Women, children, servants, and individuals exempt from taxation are often absent or recorded only indirectly. Widows occasionally appear as taxpayers when they held taxable property.
An individual’s disappearance from a tax list does not necessarily mean that person died or moved away. Property transfers, changes in financial circumstances, exemptions, and missing records may also explain an absence.
Likewise, people listed consecutively were not necessarily neighbors. The order may reflect the assessor’s route, local administrative practices, or the way the list was copied.
Township boundaries also changed over time. The early Fallowfield lists cover a larger territory than present-day West Fallowfield Township. The 1725 assessment, for example, combines Sadsbury and Fallowfield. Consequently, not everyone on these early lists lived within the boundaries of today’s West Fallowfield Township.
A Note on Transcription
The lists presented here retain the names, spelling variations, abbreviations, and original order of entries as closely as possible. Tax amounts are transcribed in pounds (£), shillings (s), and pence (d), the currency used in colonial Pennsylvania.
Some original assessments contain difficult handwriting or arithmetic discrepancies. These have not been silently corrected. Researchers should consult the linked scans of the original records when verifying names or figures.
Tax lists are most useful when examined as a series rather than individually. Following a person over several years can reveal changes in residence, property, and taxable status that would not be apparent from a single record.