ROOTS & BRANCHES

When I recently researched and recorded a presentation on the 1798 U.S. Direct Tax, nicknamed the “Window Tax” because in part the assessment of that tax was based on glass windows in homes, it took me back to the days when I was researching the Daub family of Lebanon County.

Immigrant Johan Daub lived in Bethel Township (then in Dauphin County since Lebanon would not be created for more than a decade) for the 1798 tax, which was created to fund a possible war against revolutionary France, and the listings were helpful in suggesting that the log home he bult still stands today.

This is because the Window Tax gave helpful details such as the dimensions of the homes and the number of stories high they were.

But I had never searched for Johan’s sons’ listings.

I had reason to believe that his youngest son Henry was in Johan’s own household, since Henry would be the head of household listed in the 1800 U.S. Census (with an individual of the right age to be Johan in that household).

A surprise was that two of the other sons, Dielman and Conrad, were in the same household in what was then Lebanon Township, with Dielman listed as the owner and Conrad as an occupier (This is another great feature of the Window Tax, that it includes renters who often have a much shallower footprint and landowners).

But another surprise was that the son who is my ancestor, Peter Daub, wasn’t in the listing under any spelling variant of the surname.

I knew from the 1800 U.S. Census that he lived in Myerstown (then a village in Heidelberg Township; today it would be Jackson Township, Lebanon County).

But as for 1798, he’s nowhere to be found.

I wasn’t able to figure that out but even though the Window Tax entries are in a rough alphabetical order, they each list an adjoining property owner’s name, allowing the neighborhood of 1798 to be reconstructed.

Combining this with the 1800 census—which does essentially show the enumerator’s route around Myerstown—gave me some ideas on where Peter might have been living in 1798. For one thing, his father-in-law Nicholas Noll is found in close proximity in 1800 with a house having plenty of room for Peter, his wife Magdalena, and their first child John to be living in two years earlier.

Not a “mystery solved,” but something to consider … which also reminds me that I’ve never identified Nicholas Noll’s parentage.

Genealogy is never done!

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The 1798 U.S. Direct Tax listing for Pennsylvania can be found online at FamilySearch.org (browsable only) or Ancestry.com (searchable). Many counties’ records have been abstracted, including a great volume done by Gladys Bucher Sowers that covers what is today Lebanon County.