Week 24: Tithables for the County & Parish

Tithable is a word common in the earliest documents of Shenandoah County, then Dunmore County. It refers to taxable individuals residing in the colony, county, or parish in which the levy is collected. Or, more precisely, according to historian John Robb, "the term 'tithable' is... a person who appears on a county tax list either by name or enumeration as a nonexempt county tithable" (2022). While the details of tithables changed over time, Shenandoah County's Minute Book from 1781-1785 reveals a discussion about distinguishing tithables vs. slaves, which roughly corresponds with changes to the tax system of personal property that occurred in 1782 by The General Assembly of Virginia. More specifically, the said minute book states: "ordered that the same Gent who took the lists of Tithables last year, also take the lists this year... of all Slaves whatsoever distinguishing Tithable Slaves from others, also of all White Tithables above twenty one. Horses, Cattle, Wheels, Ordinary Licences. Also the lists for the County vs. Parish Levy. The said lists to be taken before the 10th next month" (p. 99).

This opens a lot of questions. I'm focusing on the fact that both the County and the Parish in Shenandoah County prior to the American Civil War, benefited financially from the legal practice of slavery and incorporated constructs of race in our laws with the usage of "Tithable Slaves" vs. "White Tithables," which reveals the social assumption that there is a race difference between "Slaves" and "Whites." The leaders, landowners, and often ministers in our community were not ignorant of "distinguishing Tithable Slaves from others" and they openly discussed, publicly posted about, and benefited from what we deem as an unconstitutional act today. 

The County complied with the law. Tithables that were not recorded could result in a hefty fine not only for the person that failed to list all their taxable property, but also for the justice of the county government in which the oversight took place. According to William Hening's The Statutes at Large: Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature, the act of 1780 in Virginia made taxable "every free male person, above the age of twenty-one years, who shall be a citizen of this commonwealth, and also upon all slaves, to be paid by the owners thereof, except such free persons and slaves as shall be exempted on application to the respective county courts through age or infirmity" (Vol. X, p. 501). The act of 1783 further clarified the county's rights to tax: "nothing... shall be construed to prevent the several county courts from causing lists to be taken of all free male tithables, between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one years, and of imposing taxes upon all such for the purpose of county or parish levies" (Vol. XI, p. 196). These are legislature compounded on Virginia's act of 1748, which in addition to listing those persons exempt from taxes (including sheriffs), had previously guided our county's justices to claim as taxable: "all male persons of the age of sixteen years and upwards, and all negroe, mulatto, and Indian women of the same age, except Indians tributary to this government and all wives of free negroes, mulattoes, and Indians..."

Slavery was also well known in churches all across the United States of America, both in the North and in the South, not only by records but even by arrangement of the buildings themselves. In the article "Slavery and the Church," Michael Wills shares findings by Jennifer Oast, who studied slave-owning Presbyterian churches in Prince Edward County, Virginia: "some churches were key parts of the slave system. They provided moral and theological legitimacy for slavery and could be deeply invested in it themselves." Oast reports on slave-jobbing, or profiting from the hiring out of enslaved individuals even in Virginia churches, as well as ultimately benefiting financially from the sale of enslaved individuals. The Episcopal Church also discusses its involvement in the profit off of slavery in "Black and White Race in American Denominations" by A.G. Miller. "As slavery lessened its grip in the northern states and entrenched itself in the southern ones, the sentiment towards slavery shifted in the southern states to a 'necessary evil'. Many black and white abolitionists emerged in the early 1820-30s to put pressure on the slave system - challenging it on biblical grounds." Miller continues, "many southerners pushed back with justifications for slavery from their interpretation of the Bible" and reminds us that the Methodist church divided over the issue of slavery in 1844; the Baptist, in 1845; and the Presbyterian, in 1861. All time periods that remind us that Jackson, Lee, and Ashby, as well as similar CSA generals, leaders, and soldiers, would have known about the division on Biblical interpretation of slavery and seen just as many supporters for abolition as supporters for the Southern Cause. Instead, they took up a mantle similar to the slave-owners, who are quoted in "Kind but Blind: Southern Churches and Slavery, 1850s" by Bible Mesh: "in the management of negroes...the time for brute force is past, and men must admit that there is another way to make negroes contented and profitable - a way which, while it improves the moral status of the negro, will strengthen the hold of the master upon him." Bible Mesh continues: "Another owner used Luke 12:47 to prove slaves should obey their master - 'That's Scripter!' Why waste a whip, when one could just as easily crack the Word of God?" And so, as we know, Jackson used scripture to keep enslaved African Americans in their place. Some say it was compassion; many more say it was about control.

One more quick note, specific to the physicality of race in the church, because it's important to know and will resonate with those that have attended or currently attend churches in Shenandoah County, Va, especially those built before the American Civil War or soon after it. Many southern churches built in the time periods I mentioned have balconies, which were used as slave galleries. Reported examples of these churches are also in North Carolina, Maryland, and even New York - so it happened all over the USA. African Americans would be required to sit in the back, in the balcony, or give up their seats to white congregants should that need arise. As Pastor Graebner in the North Carolina church linked above reminds us, segregation was spatial and spiritual. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, even by the 1950s, famously noted, "the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o'clock on Sunday morning." A sentiment that still rings true in America today.

During a special service marking the emancipation of enslaved individuals the pastor of St. Mark's (the Maryland church link listed above), Rev. Weatherholt said in 2014, while standing in its church's slave gallery, "What was intended to degrade and separate, uplift as a holy place in memory of those persons segregated by color, class or status. Restore us, Good Lord, and place in our hearts the spirit of true reconciliation so that all might live together as brothers and sisters, no longer divided, no longer separated." 

And this is what I'm getting at for Shenandoah County's public school names. Regardless of the intention, with the horrific historical realities of slavery, of genocide, of segregation in America, in Virginia, in Shenandoah County, holding onto names that negate reconciliation and peace and that whisper to even one community member the message of segregation, of inferiority, of disingenuous Christian love, is not right. Reverting the public school names to those of Confederate leaders is a step away from the reconciliation, away from the peace, and away from the equality that the Constitution of the United States of America even now continues to amble toward.