When an individual has appeared in sequential years on the tax records, and then disappears, we can determine a more accurate date for the emigrations that occurred or potentially a death. Often there are notations about a property being transferred from one owner to another.  When a married woman appears on the tax list in place of her husband, we have a clue that he may have died. She will often be identified as widow. There are cases where married women were taxed even though their husbands were still living. This is the exception. Young men of working age were taxed as Freemen even if they owned no property. In fact, they'd be better off tax wise to own a cow as the tax was less on that than on single Freeman with no property status. The same was not true of young women of the same age. 

In many cases individuals were taxed in two townships or even two counties. If they were on the boundaries, which may well have been established even after they purchased their properties, their lands overlapped into two political divisions. They will usually show up on only one census, but on the tax rolls of both townships. It is a source of curiosity to me that if a pasture overlapped a boundary and the cow wandered back and forth across it, was she taxable in one township or both? See my article, You Gotta Know the Territory, for information about the political divisions. 

Published On 5/15/2003 By Joyce M. Tice You are our welcome visitor since 15 MAY 2003