Source Information

Ancestry.com. Pennsylvania, U.S., Tax and Exoneration, 1768-1801 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.

Original data:

Tax & Exoneration Lists, 1762–1794. Series No. 4.61; Records of the Office of the Comptroller General, RG-4. Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

About Pennsylvania, U.S., Tax and Exoneration, 1768-1801

This database contains various tax lists from late-eighteenth-century Pennsylvania.

Historical Background

This database contains exoneration returns and diverse tax lists from Revolutionary-era Pennsylvania. These include documents for supply taxes, 18-penny taxes, liquor taxes, carriage and billiard table taxes, and others. Supply taxes were levied to help pay debts from the Revolutionary War, while the 18-penny tax included both a poll tax on freemen and property taxes assessed to back issuances of paper money.

Records from the following counties are included:

Allegheny
Bedford
Berks
Bucks
Chester
Cumberland
Dauphin
Fayette
Franklin
Huntingdon
Lancaster
Montgomery
Northampton
Northumberland
Philadelphia
Washington
Westmoreland
York

What You May Find in the Records

Details on the lists vary by tax type, but they can include

name
residence
occupation
land owned
Negroes owned
tax rate
whether a man was a single freeman