Wilkes County Tax Records

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The 1798 federal direct tax for Wilkes County, NC, 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 taxed, and the 161 slaveowners are listed along with the number of slaves owned by each.

The book also includes a collection of original articles 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. Published in May 2024.

In October 2024, this book won the North Carolina Genealogical Society's "Award for Excellence in Publishing for a Book of Abstracts of an Original North Carolina Record".

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Tax lists from the late 1700s are an underrated source for finding detailed information about our ancestors. Because taxes were collected every year, they reveal when settlers arrived in the county and when they left. They show how much land a family owned and how quickly they acquired it -- even in the absence of deeds. Some of these records reveal the number of horses, cattle, and slaves that a family owned.

With over 19,000 entries covering the first 23 years of the county's history, this 638-page book is the most comprehensive collection of Wilkes County tax records that has been assembled. Each list was compared to land owned by the taxpayers, and a series of 14 custom maps shows the district boundaries as new districts were created and new settlers arrived.

Wilkes County extended north to Virginia and west to Tennessee, so settlers in present-day Alleghany, Ashe, and Watauga Counties are also included in these records. Published in December 2024.

Below is a portion of the book's introduction, a page from the 1782 tax list, and three items from the book for the 1790 tax list: 1) list of the tax districts, 2) map of the tax districts, and 3) 21-page pdf file of the tax list.

With over 19,000 taxpayer records in one database, it can be used to create a variety of different reports. I developed a surname report that pulls from all of these records to show only the entries for a single surname and its common spelling variations. While all of that information is included in the 1777-1799 tax list book, it can be helpful to see the entries for one family listed together in a simple report. For most surnames, this report is between four and eight pages long depending on how frequently the name appears during this time period.

I will create a custom surname report, save it as a PDF file, and email it to you for $10 within two days. Purchase with Paypal at the link below. Just select the $10 amount and click Next. Type the surname for the report in the note box and click Next again. Follow the prompts to complete the transaction.