The suggestion to always include the tax commissioner's name is good; I have several times regretted that I had not done that. Only after repeated mistakes (I learn verrry slowly) did I catch on that different tax commissioners had pecularities that were important. One of them would write down every tithable male in the house, one collected lists on muster days, one collected on Sundays, one was quite forgetful and would skip people, and so on. I wish I had your good advice when starting out. Tom PSpiker27@aol.com wrote: > The headings for Virginia Auditor of Public Accounts 1790 Personal Property > Tax List (PPT) for Shenandoah Co. are from left to right across the columns: > > Dates of receiving from individuals > Persons named > No. White Tithables > No. Black Tithables Do. over 16 years > No. Blacks over 12 years & under 16 years > No. Horses Mares Colts & Mules > No. Studd Horses > Prices Covering at per season > > FYI 1790 is an Alpha list and neighbors may be determined by consulting the > complete list and sorting by date. Using a perpetual calendar, one can > determine the weekend days and other days when the Tax Collector may not have > "visited". > > According to Schreiner -Yantis, The 1787 Census of Virginia, page xiv > "Tithable - Subject or liable to payment of tithes; a person or thing that > is tithable. The age at which white males were tithable at the county level > was 16 years; at the state level, the age was 21 years. The county tax paid > for the political operation of the county and for the care of the poor; the > amount of tax varied from county to county and from year to year in the same > county as the method of arriving at the amount of tax was to add the year's > expenditures and divide this by the number of tithes. All paid the same amount for > the state tithe; in 1787 the amount was 10 shillings per tithe." > > Regarding the state taxes which were first collected for 1782 and included : > ibid. page xiii, "The tax on white males over 21 years and up was repealed > on the 12th of October 1787." > > >From 1782-1787 the list include white males 16-21. This column was not > required beginning with the 1788 list; However, many commissioners continued to > include this column. In later years these ages were again included for several > years. Carefully, read all the column headings for each year. > > Cautions when consulting these lists. > > 1. Usually the heading is only on the first page of each list; therefore, you > MUST make a copy of the first page. The headings do change from year to > year. > > 2. The only notation of the year may be in the heading on the first page. > Write the year on each page. > > 3. Cite the SPECIAL TAX COMMISSIONER'S NAME on each page copied. They > collected within a precinct/geographic boundary. > > 4. Don't forget to cite the COUNTY NAME. > > Note: Land taxes for VA are separate lists then & now! > > Phyllis Vannoy Spiker > > ==== VASHENAN Mailing List ==== > Shenandoah Co VAGenWeb > http://www.rootsweb.com/~vashenan/vashenan.html