Primary Resource

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

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.

Transcription from Original

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.