New Castle, Delaware
Community History and Archaeology Program 

"A List of the Names of all such Persons as Inhabit within ye Constablery of the Town of New castle with ye sums Respectively added to their names what they are to pay towards ye present Tax or Levy for defraying of ye Publicks Charg of the County of Newastle--"

Tax data and census records provide information on who lived in a town at a given date. Tax records provide the additional information of relative wealth.

These records records from the New Castle Constabulary (=New Castle Hundred?) are from the earliest period of the Penn proprietary, just 3 years after his arrival. The tax appears to have been based on the three factors listed: acreage of land outside town, number of town lots, and tithebles, and a modified poll or head tax. The latter is not the type of poll tax used later to disenfranchise voters.

"Tithebles", at least in in colonial Virginia, were "members of the potentially productive labor force: free caucasian males age sixteen or older plus all negroes imported whether male or female, and Indian servants male or female however procured, being sixteen years of age". I don't know the definition of a "titheble" in Delaware in 1685. Note in the table that there are individuals with acreage and/or lots with no "tithebles". So, the tax does not include the individuals themselves, and is not really a "head tax".

Added columns (shown in red) are the decimal equivalent of the L/s/d columns, calculated taxes^†, wealth (rank order of taxable value), their residence in 1671, and the known location of their lots in New Castle.

* Source: Records of the Court of New Castle on Delaware, 1676 - 1699, Vol II, Colonial Society of Pennsylvania, 1904. Taxes for 1683 and 1684/5 are partially available from Google Books or as a pdf (3 mb) here
Data for 1692 and 1697 are available on microfilm reel R-76, Proprietary Notes RE: Lower Counties, Pnn MS at the Delaware Public Archives, Dover,

† It's possible to see how the taxes were calculated. Sorting of the list by "Town Lotts" shows that there were some individuals with one lot, but no acreage or tithebles. They paid 1s/1d=13d. People with two or three lots paid 2/2 and 3/3 respectively. People with only a single titheble paid 2s/8d=32d, with two tithebles they paid 5/4=64d. Similarly people with 100 acres of land and no other wealth paid 1/1; with 300 acres, 3/3. The tax calclulated by adding these factors is very similar to that demanded in 1653, with only a few exceptions, e.g. John ffolk, and Ephraim Herman.

English money (pound/shilling/pence, L/s/d) is based on 20 shillings/pound, and 12 pence/shilling. I calculated the taxes in decimal pounds as:
calculated tax = =(acres/100 * 13/240)+(#lots*13/240)+(#tithebles*32/240). Only Giles Barret and Epharim [Ephraim] Herman underpaid significantly.


Map locations refer to Louise Heite's reconstruction of property records 1657 to 1736.

Jim Meek
nc-chap.org
2014