Eschleman's Tax Assessments for Pequea Township, Lancaster County, 1720-1726

Contents 1 Documentation 2 Comments 3 Recurrence 4 Data

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Documentation

See:

Eschleman's Original paper

Eschleman's Lists for Early Lancaster County for discussion.

Index to Eschleman's Tax Assessment Lists for Lancaster County

Eschleman's Tax Assessments for Pequea Township, Lancaster County, 1720-1726

Population Volatility in Pequea Township, 1721-1726

Population Volatility in Conestoga Township, pre-1718-1826

Comments

The table located under "Data" provides a composite inventory of persons appearing in the 1720-1726 tax assessments for Pequea Township, Lancaster County. In some cases entries for certain persons in different years appear under variant spellings of the surname and/or given name. Where possible, these variant name records have been combined as a single entry. For example, James Gault is almost certainly the same person as is listed at different times as "James Galt", "James Galdt", and "James Goldt". In some cases it is not so obvious that a certain spelling is clearly the equivalent of another. James Barger for example, appears under this spelling in four out of six assessments. "James Parger" in 1724 is most likely the same individual, but the similarity of the spellings is not so obvious as with James Gault. In some cases it is possible that two very different spellings are in fact the same person. For example "James Ganston" COULD be "James Gauston" but the spellings are so different that a firm conclusion can not be reached; in these cases the persons are left uncombined. In all cases where a "standardized name" has been fixed, that spelling variant is listed as such in the left most column, while the entry under the tax assessment year retains the original spelling.

After combining similar names, this data set is shown to contain an estimated 88 distinct individuals. The majority of these individuals (50 out of 87, or 56%) appear just a single time. A total of 71 out 87 individuals (87%) occur no more than twice. Only two individuals occur in each of the six tax assessments. (See Recurrence below for a summation of recurrence frequency data).

There may be several explanations underlying these results.

A. The aggregation process may not have recognized that some individuals found in one year, were in fact the same person as found in another year, but under a very different spelling of the name.

Such differences may be embedded in the original tax assessment lists (which have not survived), may reflect an error in Eschelman's transcriptions, or an extration error made during the conversion of Eschelman's transcriptions to the present format

B. The tax assessments do not include all persons present in the area (ie, some individuals were not counted), or included some persons who should not have been included

This can arise from several causes. For example: a) the tax collectors may have missed some people, b) the tax collector deliberately chose to leave someone out (e.g, bcause of age, infirmity or other circumstances; c) the boundaries of the township may have changed, or the tax collectors understanding of where the boundaries lay may have changed; and d) the original assessment list did not survive intact.

C. Some individuals may have died or left the area.

Recurrence

The following table summarizes the "recurrence frequency" for individuals present in different tax years. A frequency of "1" indicates that they were present in a single tax year. A frequency of "6" indicates that they were present in each of the six tax years for which we have data during this period. These data combine persons thought to be entered under slightly different spellings of the name in different years. This may have led to some inadvertent "lumping" of different people with the same name.

Data