When Did Edward Salt Migrate from Virginia to Kentucky? Using Taxes to Find Him – 52 Ancestors # 15

In my quest to track Edward Salt, my first Salt ancestor in the U.S., I have been using a variety of records to find him.  The family myth is that he came to Virginia, an Englishman having married an Irish lady and therefore unwelcome in the family in England.  The story goes variously that he migrated from Suffolk County, Virginia to Crab Orchard or Paris, Kentucky around 1790 and/or that he built the first cabin in Franklin Township, Ohio in 1796 (which was before Ohio statehood).  I have found no evidence for Edward in Suffolk County, Virginia.  Crab Orchard, Kentucky would make sense as the Salt family’s first stop in Kentucky as it was an early pioneer station near the end of the Logan Trace branch of the Wilderness Road.  However, I have found no records of their being there either.  It seems likely that people did not stay there long but used the station as a jumping off point for heading further into Kentucky.

Early on in my researches, I found an Edward Salts in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area for the 1790 census and for a long time I thought that he and his family must have traveled mostly on the rivers and that explained the Pennsylvania location.  They would then have later traveled down the Ohio River as far as southern Ohio and northern Kentucky.  The fly in this ointment was that the person count for this family was incorrect:  there were 2 males less than 16 years old which was correct but only 3 females counted.  There should have been 4 females, his wife and 3 daughters.  Uh-oh.  I came up with creative answers including that his wife had died or that one of the daughters wasn’t traveling with the family.  But I didn’t like these explanations.  Years later a Salt researcher opined that the Edward Salts in the Pennsylvania census was not our Edward but likely from the family of Salts that eventually settled in Ohio but not in the same location.  Unfortunately, the 1790 census (and 1800 as well) for both Virginia and Kentucky no longer exists.  It is said that probably the paper copies were burned in Washington D.C, during the War of 1812.

In trying to develop a timeline for Edward’s life and movements, I started looking at tax records.  A book edited by Rice of 1774 taxes in Berkeley County ¹ did not show Edward in Berkeley County for that time period.  However, he must have been there from at least 1780 , since he was listed as providing supplies to the American army.  Further, from land records I knew that he had been in Berkeley County, Virginia since February 1781 or before, based on a land grant to him dated then.  There are 2 tax lists I haven’t yet been able to access, for 1782 and 1783 in Berkeley County which should include him.  I also did find that Edward Salts was listed on a Personal Property Tax list for Berkeley County, Virginia in 1787.  There are land records showing Edward selling land in Virginia in 1789.

While I knew from family history that Edward had ended up in Kentucky, I wasn’t sure about the timing (or his path).  On my first trip to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City,  I eventually found him in several tax records in Kentucky, in Bourbon County and later in Bracken County.  For the years from 1793 – 1795 he was on the tax rolls in Bourbon County.  The last tax record I have found so far listing Edward is from Nov 22, 1799, showing him being taxed in Bracken County, Kentucky.  So now I have narrowed the time the Edward Salt family migrated down to between about 1790 and 1793.

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