Death and Taxes

In my research into the Greene's of Coventry, one of the most wonderful caches of materials that I found was an almost continuous collection of tax books beginning in about 1756. The town has tax records for every year until the 1810s (when I stopped looking!). Some of them have been transcribed by Catherine Hey in the Rhode Island Roots special edition of "Gleanings from Rhode Island Town Records: Early Coventry Record" (RI Roots, April 2010), but her coverage is from 1756 to 1769. There were more, and the ones that I was particularly fascinated by were the ones that covered the years from 1770 to 1800. For every year, you will find two different books, a town rate book, and a state rate book, since the town was responsible for sending money collected from landowners to pay its share of state expenses, and the town also needed a separate income source for its own expenses. For some years, you may also find an estate rate book. Some of the books contain poll counts (nice for a head count of adult males that may still be living at home) and how much each person owed in taxes. It's difficult to track how much a person's estate might have grown based on the taxes paid, since the rates changed, as did the currency value, but the thing I like best about tax books is that you can see men coming of age, dying off, moving into town and buying property.

Here's the first page of the State rate book for 1785

Coventry State Tax Rate book for 1785, Coventry Town Clerk's Office, Coventry, RI.

I love the coffee mug stain on this one.

Here is the Coventry Town Rate book for 1779.

Coventry Town Rate Book for 1779, Coventry Town Clerk's Office, Coventry, RI.

The earliest ones are grouped alphabetically by the first letter of the first name, and the later are grouped by the first letter of the last name, after that it's just a seemingly random list. By looking at a series of years, though, it looks as if they used previous years tax books to write the new ones, so the lists appear very similar from year to year, with the main changes being related to people who may have died during the year, and naming their widows in the place of the men who died. It also appears that the folks may have been grouped geographically by surname, but that's just a hunch on my part.

There's one other interesting type of Coventry tax books that shows "Value of Estates." I presume that this is really more of a list of landowners and an approximate value of the property that they own, but it also lists the heirs of particular estates, so you can see who inherited the property. This is an example from 1780.

Value of Estate Book for 1780, Coventry Town Clerk's Office, Coventry, RI.

I'm off to look for a similar series of tax books for some other Rhode Island towns including Tiverton and Portsmouth for another project, hoping to solve some more brick wall problems with tax list data. Wish me luck!

Too many Greens

I've been working on a project for the surname Green/Greene in Coventry between 1750 and 1800. This is a time period in Rhode Island research that can be ridiculously challenging since there were few vital records kept, and the best way to establish relationships or identity is by using land and court records. So I toddled off the the Coventry Town Hall to look through the land records which date back to about 1748.

Does anyone know how many male Greens there are in Coventry between 1750 and 1780? Do you have any idea how many land transactions there were? I counted 34 index entries per page and about 50 pages of Greenes for grantor entries up to the year 1845 which is more than 1700 deed entries (and that's just the Grantor index). There have to be over 40 unique individuals with the surname Greene in the area during that time period. When you look at the transactions of just the males named Benjamin Greene in the Grantee Deed Index there are over 30 entries. How does one sort out who's who, how they're related, and which ones to focus on when there are so many?

I've been using 2 techniques (mind maps and spreadsheets) with moderate success for distinguishing all Greene and how they are related. Often, the men or the people taking the information identify their fathers to distinguish among the 3 James, 3 Joseph and 2 Ebenezer Green's all living concurrently in the town.  I had to start somewhere, so I used mind mapping software to help me visualize various families and how they may all be connected. Taking information from a number of different sources I consolidated it into one picture using sources for a specific time period (of course, don't ask me which information came from which source, this is just a visual to sort out who's who on a general scale, I'd have to go back to document everything.) Below is one of the mind maps I created for Greene's in Coventry in the decade between 1740 and 1750.

Mind Map of Greenes in Coventry

I then did it for a later time period when there were even more individuals. In 1778, there were more than 30 taxable inhabitants in Coventry, all with the surname of Greene. Some were women (which helps), and based on how much they were taxed, I could determine if they owned real estate or not which I color coded. This could be helpful when searching for deeds (see below).

X Map of Greenes in 1778

While I have only touched the surface of mapping, I can imagine creating a mind map for each source with all the information contained in it. I can imagine shifting the families around to then overlay them onto a map of town to determine if they group geographically. Fortunately, Coventry covers the largest amount of area of any town in Rhode Island so reconstructing land parcels using physical maps might prove useful as well. But which specific deeds should I look at?

My thought was that as I looked through the Grantee index, I could often distinguish individual land sales from the distribution of an estate by looking for "et al" or "administrator," suggesting that the land sale had something to do with a probate. While the probate records are pretty good, if someone didn't leave a will, it's often difficult to determine who the heirs were, despite the fact that the estate still had to be divided amongst the heirs. So I went through the index and chose all the grantor deeds that contained "et al" and put them into a spreadsheet that I could then sort in a number of ways.
Example of Greene Spreadsheet

Greene et al Grantor	Grantee	Vol	pg	Year
Ann  et al	Benjamine Green	9	66	1777
Benjamin	Nathaniel Green	5	5	1767
Benjamin	Thomas Stafford	6	18	1768
Caleb	Elisha Greene	5	130	1769
Caleb	John Andrews	5	308	1771
Catherine	John Matteson	7	57	1777
Cathrine	Jacob Greene	10	13	1779
Christopher et al	Griffen Greene	4	381	1770
Christopher et al	Peter Levally	7	68	1778
Christopher et al	Michael Letson	7	507	1777
Christopher et al	Jacob Greene	10	13	1779
Deborah	Charles Cook	5	209	1772
Elihu et al	Griffen Greene	4	381	1770
Elihu et al	Benjamine Vaughan	5	340	1777
Elihu et al	John Greene	5	425	1782
Elihu et al	John Matteson	7	52	1777
Elihu et al	Michael Letson	7	507	1777

There were more than 70 entries. Then, by sorting them by volume and page, I could see which individuals mentioned in an "et al" deed sorted together, were found in the same volume and page, meaning that they appeared in the same deed together and were probably related. I can later determine whether they were all related using other documentary evidence. It worked pretty well. I could also sort based on year, or grantee, to organize my research plan and focus on the years when I knew someone died, or a significant first name, or whatever.

While my Green project isn't quite finished, I hope that other folks working in towns with dozens of individuals with the same surname can use these techniques to sort out family groups to focus your research to find what you're looking for!