Taxes and Tithes: Researching Enslaved Communities in Colonial Virginia

Genealogists that research the slavery era often long for extant records that list enslaved individuals by name. Usually those records are far and few between, but Colonial Virginia records can be an exception. Annual lists of “tithable persons” provide a surplus of records concerning enslaved communities. While researching Grace Shelton of Louisa County, these records contained valuable clues to her birth year, her physical location, and her various ties to the family of Patrick Henry. The hypocrisy of “Give me liberty or give me death” continues past the Revolutionary War with the creation of “personal property” tax lists that go into even more detail about the human property of these Founding Fathers.