HISTORY BY HAND

original historic handwritten manuscripts, documents and letters

a division of Jonathan Sheppard Books

Item Number: DM4001

The Assessor's Notebooks: A collection of 7 small notebooks: one for 1854, two for 1855, two for 1856, and two undated - labeled No. 1 and No. 2. Each contains handwritten lists of residents, along with their property valuations - some in pencil and some in ink- for that year.  Some of the names with multiple entries include: Arnold, Burlingame, Bennet, Barber, Case, Davis, Goodrich, Jenison, Ransford, Weed, Wescott, and Willcox.

Each of the 7 notebooks is approximately 4” X 3”, and is bound with crude stitching and paper self-covers.  There are approximately 30 pages in each of 5 books and about 16 pages in each of the two undated books; there are several blank pages in each notebook.  The property owners’ names are grouped by first initial of the surname.  Both the size and the value of the assessed real estate is given, as well as information on dog ownership.  There is a separate list at the end of most notebooks headed "military". This is a list of names but with no valuation attached. Although there is no identifying information indicating where these notebooks are from, our research has confirmed that they are from the Town of Norwich, Chenango County, NY. Most of the individuals listed in the notebooks were living in or near the village of Norwich in the 1850s and 1860s.

Background Information: Notebooks such as these would have been used by assessors as working copies to compile preliminary information for the official town assessment rolls.  Copies of these kinds of records are exceedingly rare. These notebooks were the property of and are in the hand of Philip Kirtland Warner (1791 – 1885), a farmer who settled in the Norwich area after leaving Washington County, NY. 

Philip Kirtland Warner  was the son of Philip Warner (1766 – 1848) and his wife Sarah Woods (d. 1853).  He married Lovina Ackley (1794 – 1889) of Cambridge, Washington County NY in 1813 and moved to the town of Norwich, Chenango County about 1825.  He was the father of four children.  His brother Abner Warren Warner had moved to the Norwich area several years earlier.  Philip and Abner Warner were descendants of Andrew Warner, who was in Cambridge (Newtowne) Massachusetts as early as 1632.

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