1801 – Order for a Tennessee sheriff to seize the property of a woman convicted of not paying taxes on land that she owned

Wilson County, Tennessee, 1801. Unbound. Very good. This manuscript seizure order was issued by the State of Tennessee, on 18 September 1801. It directs the Wlson County Sheriff to seize and auction the property of Mary Henry to pay her delinquent land taxes, for which she had previously been convicted.

It reads in part:

“You are hereby commanded that the goods & chattles & lands and tennements of Mary Henry you cause to be made the sum of three dollars fifty five cents also forty cents the amount of the Taxes Costs and Charges upon 640 acres of land listed for taxation for the year 1800 in sd County & not . . . paid thereon where on she is Convict as appears to us of Record and have you the same before the Justices of our sd Court of Pleas and Quarter sessions on the fourth Monday in December next to render unto the State & County. . . . John C. Henderson [Clerk of the Court]”

Docketing notes:

“Nov. 12th 1801 / Struck off to John C. Henerson highest bidder for $5.17 Cents, money not all paid, afterwards money returned to sd Henderson. . ..”

. At the time, Tennessee did not have an income tax. Instead, money was raised through Poll and Land Taxes. In this case, Ms. Henry had not paid her land tax for 1800.

Mary likely was a member of the Henry family descended from John Henry, who family lore suggests, was a stowaway on a British ship from Amsterdam. He settled in Dutch Pennsylvania near Lancaster before moving on to Wyeth, Virginia. From there, the family spread into Kentucky and Tennessee via The Great Wagon Road that ran from Philadelphia to western North Carolina. One of his daughters, Mary (known as Polly) is believed to have moved with a man to Tennessee. Apparently, no Wilson County tax records before 1827 are available.
(For more information, see online genealogical entries via Ancestry.com and Coffee’s and Adkins’s “The Henrys of Eastern Kentucky and Southwest Virginia,” available online.).