Analysis:1782 Washington County Tax List. Summary Data

Southwest Virginia Project

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Tithables

Sex and tithing

The tax list does not explicitly note whether an individual is male or female, but this can usually be inferred from their given name. In a few cases this is not possible because the given name has not survived, or the name itself is not obviously male or female. In these cases the persons sex is scored as "Unknown". There is one instance in this transcription that is particularly problematic. In this instance the person's given name is listed as "Ana". Normally, it would be presumed that "Ana" is a variant spelling of "Ann, Anne, or Anna", and would be scored as "female". In this particular case the person is shown as having a single tithe. No other instance of a woman being shown with a tithe is found in this data set, which is consistent with the idea that women appear in the tax list when they are Heads of Household". Since this normally happens only when a woman is widowed, and widows were normally exempted from taxes, it is presumed that some one listed with a thithe (such as "Ana"). The possibility that this individual is a male is strengthened by the fact "Ana" could be short for Ananias. We lack sufficient data to be confident of the sex of "Ana", but this specific record is treated as if "Ana" were in fact a female.

Horses, Cattle, and Slaves

The tax records list the number of Horses, Cattle, and Slaves owned by each HOH. The following table summarizes information about this. Note that in some cases the data for some of these categories for was not legible in the original document. Where this happens the record was excluded from the summary. The total number of HOH's for this reduced data set was 945

* Some HOH have no tithables, and some have 2 or more. In the net, there are fewer Tithables than HOH's,

Comparison of Slave and Non Slave HOH

*Less than one because some HOH had no tithables