Dear Randy: Where did You Get That 1798 Massachusetts Tax List?

After I posted Treasure Chest Thursday - Post 249: 1798 Direct Tax List Record for Benjamin Sever and Sarah Sever this morning, I received an email from a correspondent asking the question:  "How did you obtain that record?"

As I noted in my blog post, the "Massachusetts and Maine 1798 Direct Tax" collection is on the AmericanAncdestors.org website.  This is part of my New England Historic Genealogical Society membership, and I try to use it as often as possible for my New England ancestors and their records.  The digitized records are great, and they are adding useful records every month.  I digress...

On the AmericanAncestors.org home page, after logging in, I clicked on the "Search" dropdown menu and selected "Databases:"

Clicking on the "Databases" link opened the Search fields for all of the databases on the site.

I added a name, first name = simon, last name = gates, and since I was specifically after entries in this one database, I limited the year range to 1798-1798.

I could have selected the "Tax" record type, or clicked on the "Advanced Search" and selected the "Category" and the specific "Database."

After clicking the "Search" button, the list of results from my search were:

I was interested in Simon Gates of Gardner, Massachusetts (my 5th great-grandfather), so I clicked on the second result on the list (there is another Simon Gates of Gardner entry also - his son).  Here is the top of the record page in Gardner:

And further down on the page:

Simon Gates is listed on the image above, with six lines for his property, defining the acreage and the valuation.  

There is a "Download" button above the image, so I downloaded the image, then renamed it and added it to my file folder for Gates > 02-Simon Gates + Susanna Reed > Documents with the file name of:

SimonGates-1798-TaxRecord-GardnerMA-MA&MEDirectTax-V14-p281

I added an Event in my RootsMagic database in the profile of Simon Gates, then added a source citation, attached the image to Simon Gates and tagged it to the Tax List entry, and added a note with the extracted information to the Event.

Then I noticed that Nathan Gates (Simon's son, my 4th great-grandfather) was on the same image, so I copied the file to Nathan Gates file folder, renamed it, added an Event in Nathan's profile, added a source citation, added a note for the extracted information, and attached the image to Nathan and tagged it to the tax event.

That took me all of 5 minutes - from logging in to adding the second image.

I could use RootsMagic to add the event, the image, the source, and the extracted information to the FamilySearch Family Tree profiles for Simon Gates and Nathan Gates.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2015/02/dear-randy-where-did-you-get-that-1798.html

Copyright (c) 2015, Randall J. Seaver