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Archiver > PA-OLD-CHESTER > 2007-09 > 1190323987


From: "Mal Humes" <>
Subject: Re: [PaOldC] Freeman,freeman,free man and early PA land ownership
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2007 17:33:07 -0400
In-Reply-To: <011001c7fade$21d61370$0d6a0cd8@sandabspkoh6u6>


I thought that I'd also seen reference to one of these terms being use to
refer to indentured servants and that perhaps that was a differentiating
factor between freeman and inmate - especially considering that some of the
indentured servants were sent over as prisoners, such as the Jacobites
captured in battle circa 1718.

Like Lew, I also looked last night for sources to verify any of these
definitions we've seen and found this at the www.genpa.org site:

http://www.genpa.org/research_taxrecords.html

'The Colonial and early 19th century lists were usually divided into several
lists - one of property owners, usually dubbed "freeholders"; another of
married renters heading households, called "inmates"; and a "single freemen"
list composed of unmarried men (usually age 21 and above). At times the best
proof of an individual's marriage may be when the groom moves from "single
freeman" to "inmate."'

There is also some other useful info on the web page that came from that
goes into early census and tax records in PA.

Here's a detailed discussion of inmates and freeman here that offers some
additional clarification.

http://cip.cornell.edu/Dienst/UI/1.0/Summarize/psu.ph/1129769118
Kenneth W. Keller and Lee Soltow
Rural Pennsylvania in 1800: A Portrait From the Septennial Census
Source: Pennsylvania History 49 (January 1982), 25--47

"Earlier county tax and septennial statutes had
required assessors to list inmates: the term appears as early as "An Act
for Raising County Rates and Levies" of 1724/1725, the fundamental
Pennsylvania county tax statute for the eighteenth century." Inmates
were persons who lived in the house of someone else, sometimes in
exchange for payment. They were not family members of the house-
owner, nor were they guests or servants.'
2
In England they were often
poor persons, farmed out by the parish, to be cared for by household-
ers.
3
In Pennsylvania the term "inmate" may have meant a married
tenant; presumably inmates were not indigents, for the county tax law of
1799 had instructed county commissioners to exempt persons they
considered indigent.
4
The Pennsylvania legislature abandoned the term
"inmate" in county tax law in the 1795 statute, "An Act to Regulate the
Mode of Assessing and Collecting County Rates and Levies.'"" Nev-
ertheless, a few county assessors continued to list inmates in a separate
column in their septennial lists. Where inmates appear on the septennial
schedules, they may indicate tenancy. "Inmates" appear in the septen-
nial lists for such townships as Brandywine, Coventry, Charlestown,
Kennett, and Pikeland in Chester County, for East Hanover and
Lebanon in Dauphin County, and for most Lancaster County town-
ships, except for the borough of Lancaster. Sometimes the local assessors
used the term "laborer" where they did not indicate "inmate," as in the
case of Albany Township of Berks County. There were, of course, other
persons in the commonwealth who were not inmates but were tenants;
the "inmate" designation represents only a portion of the common-
wealth's total tenant population.

Another old term that continues to appear in the septennial lists was
the designation "single freeman," "freeman," or "singleman." The
septennial acts of 1786, 1793, and 1800 had not required assessors to list
single men, but the April 11, 1799, county tax statute did require
assessors to compile lists of the names of all single freeman above age 21
"who shall not follow any occupation or calling."'

Accordingly, most county assessors listed single men separately in the
septennial lists. They
were adult males, out of their apprenticeship, often without property,
but occasionally with occupations listed. Frequently they must have
lived with their parents. If they did own property, assessors were to list
its valuation. Jackson Turner Main suggests that in 1765 singlemen
were free artisans and laborers. In the Chester County tax lists he
studied, they owned no animals and amounted to 40% of the men of the
county. The proportion in the 1800 septennial lists seems to be smaller
for most counties for which information is available.'

Perhaps after independence there was a greater tendency for single men to
head for
newly opening lands in the west."


Also an interesting JSTOR article comes up in a search and looks potentially
very relevant for this list, but I don't have access to read the article
unless I visit a local college library, though if you look for these in
JSTOR you can often read the first page for free.

See:

JSTOR: Tenancy in Colonial Pennsylvania: The Case of Chester County
Lucy Simler
The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., Vol. 43, No. 4 (Oct., 1986), pp.
542-569
doi:10.2307/1923682
This article consists of 28 page(s).
"The labor system of inmates and freemen characteristic of rural
Pennsylvania throughout the century evolved early in the colonial period out
of ..."

The article's preview says:

"The myth that almost all eighteenth-century American Freemen owned land
persisted well into the twentieth century....Tenants were rarely identified
as such in public records, and when they were, it was seldom in a way that
would draw attention to tenancy as an institution for understanding early
American Society."

That looks like it addresses some of the differences in early land
"ownership" under the Penns, which as I only vaguely understand it was not
one of clear and indefinite ownership since because of the system of
"quit-rents" and rent fees due to Pennsylvania's Proprietary owners.

There were differences in the ways some of the early colonies handled land
ownership and this is said to be one reason some of the Lancaster/Dauphin
county area Scots-Irish sided with the Connecticut land claims in the
Wyoming Valley that led to the "Pennamite Wars". It also seems to come up as
one of the reasons for migrations to North Carolina where land ownership was
handled differently, and probably also relates to some of the early border
issues with PA/MD/VA lines.

And also this has some discussion of Chester County census records from
1783:

JSTOR: The "Best Poor Man's Country" in 1783: The Population ...
"The Chester tax and census records, then, are the focus of this essay; ....
1 Early in the eighteenth century a freeman helping his parents on the farm
or ..."

One of the Historical Society of PA manuscript collection finding aids (on
the Lightfoots) that I cited in a post some time back had a fairly detailed
description of the PA Land purchasing process and how this changed over
time. That Lightfoot manuscript collection is cited in this article on
JSTOR.


Some discussions of Quit-Rents, proprietary land owners and tenants can be
found here:

http://www.altlaw.com/EDBALL/quitrent.htm

Anyway, it also appears that Freeman is a term that could mean a few things
based on context of when and where the term was used.

It also always reminded me of the book and movie Dune where it refers to a
nomadic tribal people on a distant planet. That's the first place I remember
seeing the word.


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