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September 17, 2006
Fail Not at Your Peril
Yesterday I took a break from my research to help Shirley with her research. As I've said a couple of times, she's trying to find an honorable person in either of our backgrounds. Actually, genealogy, after one get back a few generations, is an engaging intellectual process that requires the skills and intuitions of a historian, the organization of an accountant and the patience of the proverbial Job. (I say "proverbial" because the Job portrayed in the Hebrew Bible just doesn't seem all that patient to me.)
Yesterday we went to the Public Library in Carlsbad, California. It has an unusually rich collection of public records that occasionally produce interesting results. I was assigned to check out a book by Gladys Bucher Sower called Colonial Taxes, Lebanon Township, Lancaster Count, Pennsylvania, 1750 - 1783 to see if any of our relatives who Shirley knew were once in that area were listed. None clearly were. Or if they were, we could not determine if the person named was really one of our relatives. So the information goes into a database as a loose end until she accumulates more evidence.
But, one thing about these records startled me. I was struck by the instructions to tax collectors. Here is a scan of a copy of a reproduction of a copy of one of those written instructions.
Here is what it says in a little more readable version,
A Tax for the King's UseLancaster,
To: Michael Horst, Collector of
LebanonYou being appointed Collector of the within Tax, are hereby required to demand of the Persons within mentioned, the several Sums wherewith they stand charged. But if any shall think themselves aggrieved with what they are here rated, acquaint them that the Day of Appeal, is the Eighth Day of January next at the House of Mr. Mathias Slough In the Borough of Lancaster.
But, if you cannot meet with the Person of whom Demand is to be made, leave Notice in Writing with some of the Family, or at a Place of their last Abode, signifying the Day of Appeal; at which Time you are to attend with this Duplicate, and the Names of such Persons in your District as you find omitted herein. Fail not at your Peril. Dated the Seventh Day of December Annoque Domini, 1759.
The part I liked best was the sentence, "Fail not at your Peril." I'm not sure what the consequences of failure were but with those word of encouragement, they sure couldn't have been good.
Posted by DuaneSmith at September 17, 2006 06:27 PM | Read more on Odds and Ends |
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