The 1779 Tax Assessment for Hanover Precinct, Ulster County, New York - Part I

[Also see Part II of this Article.]

The 1779 tax assessment for Hanover Precinct, Ulster County, New York is the most complete list of residents I have found of the inhabitants of this area during the Revolutionary War.  It is the bridge between the US census of 1790 and the list of shoppers at the Colden Store of 1768.  

If you are new to researching this area, it was renamed to "Montgomery Precinct" in 1782, "Town of Montgomery" in 1788, and became part of an expanded Orange County in 1798. 

I believe I first saw the tax list on microfilm at the New-York Historical Society, but I later was given a pdf copy by a local historian who I sadly cannot remember. I referenced it so often that I transcribed it to a spreadsheet which I could sort and search. Finally, today I loaded the searchable 1779 Tax Assessment database to the OCHS website, so others can find and use. 

I wrote about this tax assessment in my biography of Joel Campbell, Yeoman of the Revolution.  I incorrectly suggested that John Blake prepared the census, but I have later discovered it was prepared by David Galatian. I wrote about the Galatian family.  David would create the 1798 map of Montgomery and would be its first supervisor upon creation in 1798.

Because I had a known relationship to all of the Campbells in this tax assessment (except for Phinely who was a tenant of Colden), I thought there was a good chance that a Campbell who joined the Hanover militia in 1776 was probably also related. This is the Andrew Campbell written about in prior blogs.  YDNA has shown that is not the case. More on that soon.