Progress and Mobility Among Ohio Propertyholders, 1810-1825

Our knowledge of economic progress for early Ohioans is limited because it is so difficult to trace successfully given individuals from year to year, let alone from decade to decade. If we start with the names of a dozen men, we often lose the genealogical trail of half of them before the search has progressed more than a few years. That is why we should welcome any solid evidence of tracings for any large subset of Ohio’s population, as presented on its tax duplicate for given years. Such evidence can teach us a great deal about the number of propertyholders who remained in Ohio over a period of of time, how many moved on, how many died, and something about their material progress.Over a period of many years, Dr. Gerald Petty of Columbus has recorded information on taxpayers in Ohio and has provided me with punched cards and computer tapes for all taxpayers on the Ohio tax duplicates for the years 1810 and 1825. These duplicates are township and county lists of the names of taxpayers, details of their properties, and their tax assessments. These data describe 4.3 million acres in 1810 and 14.7 million in 1825, a sizable leap in development for this frontier state; by the time of its first federal census of agriculture in 1850, Ohio had recorded 18.0 million acres. In the 15-year period between 1810 and 1825, the number of propertyholders grew from 14,098 to 51,506. The purpose of this article is to report how many from the original group could be found among the latter number, and to say something about material progress in those cases where names could be matched. This study provides some fundamental knowledge about the early economic development as well as the levels of wealth inequality in Ohio.