Anne: I'm in the soup, then - because almost noone in London Britain township owned as little as 29 acres of land, in fact, almost noone owned less than 100 acres! And most of those who owned small plots of land had small plots indeed, they were accountants, shopkeepers, and such, with maybe half an acre. It LOOKS to me as if John Smith intended to farm enough to meet the subsistence needs of his family. The family sketch says "their labor was divided between the loom and the plough". Having seen what my 100 acre owning ancestors had in their estate inventories, it looks to me like they weren't raising much more grain themselves than they needed to feed their families, even though my Oley Valley history says that southeastern Pennsylvania was the nation's breadbasket at that time. It also looks remarkably like farmers nominally held title to their land but often cooperatively worked it! "Half interest in acre of wheat in the ground"? "Half interest in wagon"! I don't understand which of the figures on the tax book is what you mean by the "assessed" value, though. The pages I have usually show two figures, one the "value", a smaller one, the "assessed value", and then the tax. Which is the assessed value you're talking about? Which value does the single value in the more simply written 1799 tax record correspond to? Would the larger value that describes itself as the actual value, be the amount of money the land could be sold for? It is pretty clear that land that was improved in any way was assessed at a higher value. It would have sold for a higher value, too. On most records the buildings are assessed separately, so one gets an idea of what was worth what, but not in 1799. Is there anyone in Chester County who could give me an idea what the fair price for the land John Smith bought would have been? I suppose Barbara Weir has seen what people were buying and selling land for, though I don't know how much information processing she has done on what she has seen. Any historians or anyone? Yours, Dora --- Anne Wiegle <awiegle@fast.net> wrote: > Dora Smith Wrote: > >In 1799, the London Britain Township tax list, > >shows John Smith, "wever", 29 and a third > acres > >or something, assessed for $116. I don't know > of > >the property doubled in value, the Smiths had > >gotten a break on the price, or there was > >inflation but possibly someone familiar with > this > >period would know if there was radical > inflation > >in 1798/99; that was during the difficult time > >between 1776 and 1821, so there could have > been. > > Do not make the mistake of equating the > assessed value of real estate with the > actual value. > The assessment rate may change from year to > year. If the proberty is assessed > at double the value, it could be that the > assessment doubled, not necessarily > that the value went up. Maybe they needed to > build a road or something and > increased the taxes. > > Our farm was assessed at $16,000 for 28 years, > then they reassessed and it is > now $160,000. Neither figure had much to do > with the market value. Assessors > ues strange formulas to determine assessed > value. > > Barbara Weir at the Chester Co. archives, tells > me that you can only use the > assessed value to tell you how well off they > were compared to their neighbors > the same year. > > Anne Wiegle __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Free email you can access from anywhere! http://mail.yahoo.com/