Researching Ancestors in the Direct Tax of 1798

Q. What is the direct tax of 1798, and are these records available online?

A. To fund a military buildup for a possible war with France, Congress enacted a $2 million direct tax in July 1798.

Each of the country’s 16 states had to come up with its share of the $2 million. A state’s quota was based on population, with slaves counting as three-fifths of a person. State officials created their own forms and valued property, enumerated slaves and collected the taxes:

• Houses valued at more than $100 were taxed on the value. Since many of these homes had expensive glass windows, this is also called the “glass tax.” Some homeowners went so far as to brick over windows to reduce their homes’ value.
• Slaveowners were taxed 50 cents for each able-bodied slave age 12 to 50
• All other real property, which included houses valued at $100 or less, was taxed at a fixed percentage of the value.

The controversial tax was repealed in 1799. Resulting records include valuations, enumerations and tax collection lists.

The tax lists include:

• Name of occupant: Name of the occupant (head of household) of a residential home.
• Name of owner: Name of the owner of the home. If they are different people, your ancestor was likely a renter or a family member of the owner.
• Dwelling House: Number of dwellings on the property
• Out-houses: Structures on the property not including the dwelling. You may find stables, sheds, kitchens, shops and more listed here.
• Area: The dimensions or area of each structure (dwelling and out-houses).
• Construction details: Similar to Sanborn Maps, these lists detail what type of materials each structure was built of and how many windows in each structure. The lists also include the number of lights in the structures, as well as the quantity of land in each lot.

The “situation and adjoining proprietors” information contained in these lists can help you reconstruct the community your ancestor lived in, as it lists the direct neighbors of the specific property.

Accessing 1798 Direct Tax Lists: Where Are They?

Because the law allowed responsibility for the tax to be transferred to other governmental departments, with no directive to forward records to Washington, many of these records have been lost. Existing records are scattered among various repositories.

Unfortunately, the records’ varied locations means you won’t find a comprehensive online database for all types of direct tax records from all states.

Known 1798 direct tax lists and their physical locations are listed on the National Archives Web site.

Pennsylvania has a strong collection held at the National Archives facility in College Park, Md and also available online at subscription site Ancestry.com. The Maryland State Archives has digitized its 1798 direct tax lists on its online archive.

The Connecticut records were lost to history before being found in 2004. Learn more about the discovery of the Connecticut records here.

American Ancestors, the website of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, has online databases for Massachusetts and Maine direct taxes in its subscription collection (membership starts at $99.95 annually). Not all towns are included—an 1800s Boston Customs House janitor was feeding the records into a fire when a clerk stopped him.

A Google search on 1798 direct tax or 1798 glass tax might net you an index to records for your ancestor’s area. That’s how we found this index for lists from northern New York., an indexed dataset for Hanover Township, Morris County, New Jersey compiled by staff from the University of Delaware, and this index to a list from Tyoga Township, Lycoming County, Pa.

Genealogical publishers such as Heritage Books might have indexes in book form.

A version of this article was published online in March 2009. Last updated: April 2026

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