Some of the Orange County, Virginia, tithe lists have been preserved for 1738 and other years. In that year, Orange County was geographically very large, as it included the present Orange Co., the present Culpeper, Madison, Greene, and Rappahannock Cos., and much of the Shenandoah Valley. After the taxes should have been paid, it was found that there were several people who had not paid. A list (partial or complete) of these people has been kept also.
Such lists are interesting to me for their social commentary, even though the story is incomplete. Let's look at a list of Orange Co. delinquents for the year 1738:
Jacob Stover (3 tithables) had been added by the order of the Court and assigned to Mr. Russel's list, but he was still delinquent; John Tilly had been a constable, but was now delinquent; Jacob Cassel had been added to Mr. Russels list; David Finley, David Evan, and Jas. Hamilton had all "ran away"; Jas. Keatton was "no effects" (which I presume means that while he could be found, he had nothing with which he could pay); Buckner Allison could not be found; Robert Adams is given as "no distress", and I am not sure what that means.
The reason of "Ran away" is given several times and to this might even be added "Not found." I have wondered what was really meant by "Ran away." Did it simply mean that the person had moved to another place? Or did it mean that the person had left, perhaps leaving debts and family behind? How did the tax collector verify this information? Did he take the opinion of a neighbor, or did he do a more exhaustive search? How did the tax collector know that he was even in the right neighborhood?
The names are given, and some of the surnames are familiar to me, but one encounters many names by the time one has plotted land in three present day counties. Thus, it is no surprise to see the names Finley, Evans, Bledsoe, Berry, Clark, Hawkins, Lewis, Rush, Thornton, or Crow. I do not think any of the names on the delinquent list had a Germanic origin but such points are hard to prove. For example, who is to say that the original spelling of Crow was not Kroh.
In short, the delinquent list is a series of busted dreams, of things that have gone wrong. We talk and write so much about the success stories that we forget that life is not always a success. Virginia had many people in it who committed some crime in England, perhaps a minor crime, and who were assigned "transportation", meaning that they were sent to Virginia and not to jail. Many of these people became success stories. In the same way, let's hope that our delinquents became success stories. It would be fun to know more of their histories.
(01 Dec 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.