Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post

Cynthetiq · 06-20-2007, 09:47 AM

Thomas Jefferson set up most of this infrastructure. As a private man he somehow didn't find it odd to list all your stuff and bring it to the "officals in charge." Apparently if your father died, and your older brother was a dick, you didn't have a right to walk off with the horse or cattle.

Quote:

A 1785 law spelled out the post-Revolution requirements for suffrage, to go into effect 1 January 1787. Every male citizen, other than free Negroes, of or over the age of twenty-one, with at least twenty-five acres of land with a house at least twelve-feet square and a plantation thereon, or with fifty acres of unimproved land, or with a town lot and house, would be eligible to vote in the county where the land was, or in the case of land in several counties, in the county where the house was. Polling would take place at the court house.10 Some of these polling lists can be found in the county deed books (no secret ballot then).

Laws pertaining to property are also of interest to genealogists. Consider these examples from just after the American Revolution.

(1) Any person under twenty-one who owned land could execute a deed (to sell the land) through the guardian.11 This law tells us that persons younger than twenty-one could own land, as by inheritance or gift, but could not sell it without the participation of the guardian.
(2) Every person of the age of twenty-one or more who was of sound mind and not a married woman could write a will and devise property with two or more credible witnesses.12 This meant, of course, that married women could not write wills.

(3) No person under the age of eighteen could write a will to dispose of his chattels (primarily livestock, slaves, tools, farming implements, and other movable, tangible property; not land).13 This implies, then, that persons younger than eighteen could own such property but only those eighteen or older could write a will that would be recognized by the court. Likewise, finding a will of a single young man, an ancestor’s brother, for example, would lead a genealogist to estimate that he was at least eighteen. He may have been older but was not younger.

(4) When Virginia began collecting taxes in 1782, just after the end of the Revolution, the General Assembly spelled out procedures. (As we use the microfilmed Virginia tax records at Clayton Library, it can be helpful to keep up with changes in the tax law.) Each county court was to divide its county into precincts or districts for tax collection purposes. Annually before March 10, the county court was to appoint a justice for each precinct to make a list of enumerated (taxable) articles therein. The justice was to give public notice of when and where he intended to receive the lists from the taxpayers and was to deliver the lists and vouchers for payment on or before April 20 to the clerk of the county court. The justice was to make a “fair alphabetical list” of the names of all free males over twenty-one residing in his precinct, the names of all slaves and to whom they belonged, and the lists of other taxable property reported by the taxpayers.

For his part, every head of household or his agent was to deliver to the justice in his precinct, between March 10 and April 10 annually, a list of the names of all free males in the household over twenty-one, names and numbers of slaves belonging to his family as of March 9, and numbers of cattle, horses, wheels on wagons and carriages of all kinds, billiard tables, and other taxable property. A fine of 500 pounds of tobacco was to be assessed for concealing tax information from the county court.14 These instructions imply that the taxpayers went to the tax collector and not vice versa. It is possible, however, that some justices may have gone to their taxpayers or, logically, may have been in a given neighborhood on a given date to receive the tax lists. Thus, using the date given on some of the tax lists beside each taxpayer’s name, a researcher may still be able to identify potential neighbors based on those who paid their taxes on the same day.