This 1798 Wilkes County, NC, Tax List provides an extraordinary amount of detail. In addition to the names of landowners, this list provides the sizes and types of cabins on the property and often how they were constructed. It lists 65 mills within the county, who owned them, and where they were located. Slaves were a part of the calculated tax, and the 161 slaveowners are listed along with the number of slaves owned by each.
The book also includes a collection of original studies that I wrote based on the property descriptions of notable locations including the Robert Cleveland cabin, the Boone family cabin on Beaver Creek, the Benjamin Hubbard house, and Carter Falls. It also includes summary lists of the wealthiest landowners, largest houses, largest barns, multi-story houses, and mills.
The 1798 county boundaries extended north to the Virginia line, and west to Tennessee. It bordered Burke County on the southwest, and Iredell County on the southeast. The eastern boundary was Surry County. This list will also be of interest to those with ancestors in the areas that became Alleghany, Ashe, Watauga, Caldwell, and Alexander Counties. All or part of those counties were part of Wilkes in 1798, and families who lived there are represented in this tax list.
