Data:Map of Walkers in Chester County Tax Rolls

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Data

See: Data:Walker Tax Records for Chester County, PA

Background

The map below shows the distribution of Walkers in Chester County tax rolls from roughly 1747 to about 1763, superimposed on a depiction of township boundaries at about 1730. Township boundaries changed periodically through out the period, so this should be used only as an approximate guide to location. The display is a composite of all tax years within the period. Some persons appear only occassionally in the tax records; others multiple times. Each circle represents the present of one or more Walkers, in one or more years, on the individual township tax rolls. An individual circle may represent only a single appearance of a Walker in a township tax roll, the presence of the same Walker in multiple years in the same township, or the prsence of multiple Walkers in a given township in one or more years. Color coding identifies the presence of members of two known family lines that are present in the area: a) relations of Person:Lewis Walker (3) who settled in the Chester Valley before 1700 (rose circles), and b) Relations of Person:Alexander Walker (33) of Malin who settled in the area by 1737 (blue circles). Yellow circles represent individuals whose family relationships have not been identified. Olive circles represent persons who appear in the tax rolls of Londonderry or Oxford townships. The boundaries of these later two townships are not shown in this depiction of the 1730 boundaries. The olive circles are in the approximate centers of these townships.

Mapping

Discussion

A significant number of individual tax entries given in Data:Walker Tax Records for Chester County, PA]] are related to two known lineages: a) relations of Person:Lewis Walker (3) (rose colored dots), and b) relations of Person:Alexander Walker (33) of Malin. Currently, family connections for numerous other individuals have not been identified. Continued work to identify family relations in this group is ongoing.

The distribution of Walkers in these areas seems to show two basic groupings: a) a northern group westward of Philadelphia, and a southern group along the Maryland-Delaware border. These groupings seem to be visually distinct, but may be an artifact of tax roll survival. That is, perhaps few Walkers appear in the middle portion of Chester County only because tax rolls for those townships have not survived. This needs to be examined.

Assuming the two groupings are in fact real, this may indicate two separate lines of migration being used by different Walkers. The northern group, for example, may reflect immigration through the port of Philadelphia. In this case, immigrant Walkers may have arrived at the Port of Philadelphia and then moved westward, settling in the first available areas immediately to the west. The southern group, on the other hand, may be composed of Walker moving north from Maryland and Delaware. The earliest tax records in this group tend to be focused in the south western portions of Chester County, with later tax rolls including Walkers in more eastern townships. This may reflect a trend for migration from Maryland, north into Chester County, then eastward toward the Delaware River. Further work on this is needed.