Fellow researchers; The tax lsts exist for Union County in each year begininning in 1811 and going up to whenever. (probably they are closed after a certain year for privacy) There are occasional lost years (possibly becasue the tax book got dropped in a river). The KY tax rolls are almost complete for every county. There are a few books running around that give the taxes for some early years, but I don't think anybody has published very many of them. The best collection is at the KY state archives in Franfort, KY where all the county tax lists are organized in one big cabinet of microfilm. I had the opportunity to use them in 1973 in the old archives and more recently in 1997 in the very nice new archives. The LDS possibly has these microfilms and might loan them at their librarys around the country. The Henderson County 1799 list is fairly typical but differs mostly in that few men had yet perfected the titles to their land so only a few men in the <A HREF="http://members.aol.com/patander73/h1799tax.html">HENDERSON COUNTY TAX ROLL 1799</A> list are actually listed as owning land but they are identified as to what creek or settlement they were living in. Many of them were in 1799 in the process of having claims surveyed. A good compliment to the early tax lists would be the corresponding land records about KY land warrants which would contain the patents issued to these settlers, see: The Kentucky Land Grants, Willard Rouse Jillson, The Standard Printing Company, Louisville, Ky. 1925. Matching the waterway descritption in the tax rolls to the waterway descritption in the patents will confirm for you that it is the same person. Later years tax records get more complete in identifying the land of the taxable men and identify in whose name the land was patented, and for whom it was surveyed and where it is (waterway) and its value. It also usually included the basic family head count of whites and blacks and number of horses and cows and such and there are always a few nice tangibles like gold watches, cart wheels and other items that the county ordered taxed in that year. The tax records are in alphabetical order an advantage over the census. Interesting things to look for in the tax records are to watch for whom the land was surveyed and patented. In that way I was able to Identify Sarah Ashby as the first wife of my Robert Hooker in Hopkins County tax rolls. Also when a son came of age at 21 he would first appear in the tax records and most of the time father and son appeared in the county seat on the same day to pay up so they are listed next to each other (that helps point to an unknown father). In addition the widow was often listed as the taxable head of family after the death of the husband and in this way you can get the given name of some early wives before the 1850 census and also figure out when they die because they are then dropped from the tax roll. These are just a few suggestions on what you can get from the tax rolls and if you have not yet checked them then you have not taken advantage of a very good and useful source for family data. Patrick Anderson