Tax Time for the Julys!

Header (First Columns) Georgia Property Tax Digest Book (1878-82). Accessed on Ancestry.com.

 
I'm not ashamed to say that the idea of looking at tax records makes me want to lay down. Maybe I'm afraid of numbers. Maybe I'm lazy. I dunno. I just know that even though I've known full well for several months that the name of my maternal great-great-grandfather July Cooper, Jr - and perhaps even his father, July Sr - shows up in tax lists on Ancestry.com, I could not bring myself to start looking at them.

Until one day I did.

Huh. It turns out tax records can be pretty interesting.

Header (Remaining Columns) Georgia Property Tax Digest Book (1878-82). Accessed on Ancestry.com.

 I spent a few hours going page by page through a record set on Ancestry called Georgia, Property Tax Digests, 1793-1892. This collection pulls together a century of tax records from 137 Georgia counties, and includes both white and African American males who were 21 and over. (It also includes women who owned property!) Interestingly, as Ancestry notes, "Details on white taxpayers were recorded on a two-page form," while "Freemen were logged separately on a different, one-page form". The records are organized by militia district. (Note: when you are looking at a new record set, be sure to read their description of it, so that you understand what you're looking at and how it's organized. Trust me, it helps!) 

 I went into this record set with these touchpoints for my July Coopers:

• They were father and son, but only based on the Cooper/Cummings Family Tree. (I have found no primary sources that directly state a familial connection.)
• July Jr was born about 1858 in Washington County, GA.
• July Jr was living in neighboring Hancock County, GA, by 1870 and remained at least until 1880.

Doing a search for July Cooper turned up 29 records, all from the years 1870-1890. All but one were in either Washington or Hancock County. The outlier was for a July Cooper living in McIntosh County, which is 7 counties away from Washington County, as the crow flies. I've come across this July Cooper before and there seems to be no evidence connecting this one to mine.

As for the remaining Julys, in Washington and Hancock Counties, it seems very clear that there are only two and that they are Junior and a Senior. Sometimes this is stated directly in the books, as below.

Snippet, Georgia Property Tax Digest, 96th Militia District ("Giles"), Washington County, 1872-77.

Sometimes, one of them was listed as either "Jr" or "Sr," but the other had no suffix. Given there are only ever two of them at a time, I went ahead and assigned the missing suffix to the other, after a quick check of other evidence. And at other times, I had to make inferences with no suffixes, based on who was listed where, when, with what amount of land or assets, and in relation to what other people. This was a little more difficult. Basically, I had to make a chart:

(I used Excel for this, for the ease of sorting columns to look at the information in different ways. In fact, after I took this screenshot, I added more columns after I found a new way I wanted to arrange the info.) In the "Suffix" column, if the "Jr" or "Sr" is in parentheses, that means I inferred that from the other evidence.

So, what did I learn, or gain more evidence of?

• There were definitely both a July Sr and a July Jr. And they are always found in close proximity to one another.

• Both men were freed slaves. It was a reasonable guess anyway, given their presence in the Cotton Belt in the antebellum (Pre-Civil War) era, but their denotation on these lists as "Freedmen" adds support to that hypothesis. (According to the New Georgia Encyclopedia, "Free blacks made up a mere 0.3 percent of the state's black population in 1860, and they were concentrated largely in urban areas, especially Savannah and Augusta.").

• The names of some of their associates, both black and white. For example, A.C. Duggan, and George C. Walker are listed as employing one or both July's in 10 of 28 records. (I'll have to dig in and see what I can find about these men.) We also see the names of other freedmen working alongside them, such as Joe Archer, Aaron Chivers, Jesse Archer, and Ben Womble. And some familiar surnames appear on the same page as them, including Cummings and Scott. Jr's wife Scoatney was a Scott, and according to family lore, Sr's brother Noahwas taken in by a Cummings family.

•  July Sr becomes a landowner. Sometime between 1878 and 1882, Sr acquires 184 acres of land in Washington County! This is reduced to 130 aces by 1883 and remains that size until at least 1890. The land is valued at from $368 to $650. How does he get it, and what happens to it? The record set has no listings for him after 1890.

• And so does Jr! Between 1878 and 1882, he acquires first 10 and then 20 acres of land in Washington County. (Edit: But while July Sr is listed as being his own employer, Jr. is not. Twice, he is employed by members of the Garner family, and once, July Sr. is his employer.) By the mid-1880s, he's no longer listed as owning land here, but...

• One of them moves to Hancock County by the mid-1880s. It's likely Jr. (My great-great-grandfather July Cooper, whose father was supposedly also July Cooper, was living in Hancock County by 1880.)

• Sr. occasionally employed other freedmen.  This coincides with the time that he owned land. Here's an example, showing Harold Dixon as a freedman (second column) and July Cooper as his employer (first column). July owns 184 acres, valued at $552.

Snippet, Georgia Property Tax Digest, 96th Militia District ("Giles"), Washington County, 1878-82.

• That their personal property included livestock, furniture and farm tools. Makes sense in this agricultural region.

But, What Don't I Know? What Questions Do I Have?

• If my July, Jr is living in Hancock County in 1870 and 1880 (per Federal Censuses), how/why is he also living in Washington County in the 1870s?

•  Are these two men definitely father and son? While today we use Jr and Sr to specify a father/son relationship, in the past, these suffixes could simply be used to indicate which of two men - of no relation to each other - was the older and which was the younger. (Expect a post one day where I discuss my efforts to actually connect my July to his father. Census recs and tax rec and vital recs, oh my!)

•  And basically everything else! What were Jr and Sr doing with the land they owned? (There's an 1880 Agricultural Census that can shed some light.) How did they get it and when and how did it leave their hands? How does their land ownership  compare to other freedmen in Washington and Hancock Counties (this requires a bigger spreadsheet!)  When they were enslaved, were they owned by A.C. Duggan, who employed them both in the 1770s? Or another of the employers listed nearby? Why did Jr move to Hancock County?

Every piece of information I can find on July Coopers living in Hancock and Washington Counties is another piece of the puzzle, so I'm glad I finally took the time to dig into this record set of tax lists. Now I need to drill down further and discover what it all means!