PRIMARY DOCUMENT

“Women servants whose common imployment is working in the ground to be accompted tythable” (1662)

ORIGINAL IMAGES
Hening's Statutes at Large
CONTEXT

In the act “Women servants whose common imployment is working in the ground to be accompted tythable,” passed by the General Assembly in the session of December 1662, Virginia’s colonial government attempted to better define the conditions by which free and enslaved African Americans were taxed.

Author: General AssemblyTranscription Source: William Waller Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia from the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619 (New York: R. & W. & G. Bartow, 1823), 2:170.

FULL TEXT

Hening's Statutes at Large

Hening’s Statutes at Large, Volume 2, Page 170

WHEREAS diverse persons purchase women servants to work in the ground that thereby they may avoyd the payment of levies, Be it henceforth enacted by the authority aforesaid that all women servants whose common imployment is working in the crop shalbe reputed tythable, and levies paid for them accordingly; and that every master of a family if he give not an accompt of such in his list of tythables shalbe fined as for other concealments.

FURTHER READING

Runaway Slaves (1642–1643) Court Ruling on Anthony Johnson and His Servant (1655) “A Report of a Comittee from an Assembly Concerning the freedome of Elizabeth Key” (1656) Phillip Mongom Accused of Stealing Hogs (1659–1660) “English running away with negroes” (1660–1661) “Negro womens children to serve according to the condition of the mother” (1662) “An act declaring that baptisme of slaves doth not exempt them from bondage” (1667) “Negro women not exempted from tax” (1668) “An act concerning Servants and Slaves” (1705) “Act directing the trial of Slaves, committing capital crimes; and for the more effectual punishing conspiracies and insurrections of them; and for the better government of Negros, Mulattos, and Indians, bond or free” (1723) Denying Free Blacks the Right to Vote (1724, 1735)

CITE THIS ENTRY
APA Citation:
General Assembly. “Women servants whose common imployment is working in the ground to be accompted tythable” (1662). (2020, December 07). In Encyclopedia Virginia. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/women-servants-whose-common-imployment-is-working-in-the-ground-to-be-accompted-tythable-1662.
MLA Citation:
General Assembly. "“Women servants whose common imployment is working in the ground to be accompted tythable” (1662)" Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, (07 Dec. 2020). Web. 02 Jun. 2023
Last updated: 2020, December 07
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