What do the columns or headings on early tax digests mean?
By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, tax digests assume a printed standardized form. It is primarily the earlier tax digests that present a problem. If the headings are simply absent, go to the beginning of the tax digest and see if they are on the first page of the digest itself or at the beginnings of each militia district. If that is not the case, it is likely that the headings were in a chart in the digests that is now lost. An examination of the tax act creating the digest is useful. Each heading represents a clause in the creating legislation. Most often the forms of recording information follow the clause sequence within the legislation. However, idiosyncrasies arise where columns and headings are arranged in different ways. If the digests dates very early, a glance at Ruth Blair’s Some Early Tax Digests of Georgia will provide a complete transcript of digests of similar date with legible headings.
