Headrights and tithables are two troublesome concepts for our modern minds. Tithables were, usually, all males, white or black, sixteen or over, and all female blacks, sixteen and over. A tax had to be paid on each tithable by the head of the household. Actually, two taxes had to be paid, one to the county and one to the church. The body that represented the county was the court, and the body that represented the church was the Vestry.
The Vestry was composed of twelve men who were elected at large when a parish was formed, and thereafter they filled any vacancies by appointment. The vestry met a few times a year, actually very few times. Their biggest task was to draw up a budget for next year's expenditures. Expenses were computed in pounds of tobacco, the currency of Virginia.
The Court did a similar job, and they drew up a budget for their activities. The justices of the Court also supervised the preparation of a list of names, showing the head of the household, and the number of tithables in the household (as defined above).
The Court and the Vestry each divided their budget by the number of tithables, and this was the tax they wanted collected for their purposes. The Vestry paid a percentage to the civil authorities to collect the tax for them.
Normally, capital expenditures are financed by borrowing money, which is paid off over a period of time. The Virginia Colonial Church financed their capital needs, for purposes such as the building a church or a house for a minister, by dividing the estimating cost by three, and adding this amount to the operating budget in each of three years. Thus, there could be wide swings in the year-to-year tax.
Most tax lists that exist show the name of the household and the number of tithables, without any distinction as to the sex or color of the tithables. Thus, if William Carpenter (Zimmerman) had three tithables, we do not know if the two besides himself were slaves, or sons, or hired (live-in) labor.
One could obtain exemptions from paying the tithe on a person who was elderly or unable to work. To obtain this exemption, one went to court and explained the reason, and, if one's story was convincing, one could be exempted.
Determining the age of slaves was a problem because of the lack of paper work. Generally, one had to bring a young slave into the court and the court would estimate the age.
Lists of tithes are interesting because they are a partial census of the inhabitants. Basically, everyone was included, but only the head of households are named. Some of the extant lists are especially interesting because the person making up the list roamed the countryside looking for residences. He may have gone about it in an orderly way, so that today we can see who was living next to whom.
There was one other tax to be paid, the quit rent. This was a fee fixed at so much per acre. This went to the Colony of Virginia to pay the costs of government, and any surplus, theoretically, belonged to the crown.
(30 Nov 00)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.