Title page, List of Pollable Persons within the Shire of Aberdeen. 1696. Volume Second., printed in Aberdeen by William Bennett on behalf of the Spaulding Club in 1844 | Internet Archive

The poll tax

When we hear of a poll tax in the United States, thoughts turn to our sordid history of Jim Crow systemic racism. Regressive and repressive, these taxes were levied as a prerequisite to vote. The poor, overwhelmingly but not exclusively people of color, were effectively disenfranchised by various mechanisms, but the poll tax in particular was disproportionately directed at African-Americans to prevent them from voting at the polls.

The poll tax in 17th century Scotland was an altogether different institution, though I suppose one could argue that this was not a democracy, so disenfranchisement was a given. Still, a moot point: the motivation behind the tax was utterly different, if not more just. The term poll has its etymological roots in Middle English pol or polle meaning scalp or pate, inferring the top of one’s head. In other words, if you possessed a head, you paid the tax. A poll tax, called polemoney, was levied in Scotland from 1693 to 1699 to serve one purpose: pay the debt of war. While all taxes were unpopular, this poll tax was not as controversial as other more intrusive and regressive forms of taxation, such as a hearth tax or a window tax. It differentiated what people owed by socioeconomic status, so it seemed relatively more fair.

A de-facto census

Meticulous records were created to collect the tax, providing today’s researchers with an amazing snapshot of Scotland: a de-facto census, identities of persons within a household, occupations, and an understanding of socio-economic stratification are all derivable from the data in these records.

The List of Pollable Persons within the Shire of Aberdeen is such a record. Within its two volumes, one can peruse thousands of entries with names and surnames organized by location, parish and presbytery within the county. At a period of time when records can be hard to come by, it is an invaluable tool for the kind of work I’ve been doing here. There’s one huge problem with the data as presented in this typeset document from 1844, transcribed out of the original handwritten entries: it’s impossible to sort for analytical purposes. What if one wanted to find and list all of the Cromars in Kincardine O’Neil, say? You just have to suck it up and do a word search and copy your data over into a text document.

Until now.

A searchable, sortable database

My Canadian cousins Wendy Cromar Mathers and Jessica McDonald have been doing yeoman’s work transcribing the 1844 text into a searchable, sortable database, consulting with me regarding some strategies for formatting and distributing the work. They want to keep their effort in the background, but I’m too much of an academic not to give them due credit for what must be taking hundreds and hundreds of hours. They are too humble!

The importance of this work can’t be overstated. The data, organized by page, surname, given name, occupation, spouse, family members and place at 3 levels — township, parish, and presbytery — reformats the information entirely. Do you want to find all the Coutts living in Alford? All the Mowatts in Broomhill of Auchredrie? Every Robb in the Presbyterie of Deer? What would have taken an hour or more will now be done in a snap.

There is still work to be done. The Canadian cousins have completed Volume 1 and are working on Volume 2. Wendy and I have been brainstorming on design of a tool to help with searching the often strange variations in orthography one is apt to run into — Dun, Dunne, Doune, or Dwn (yep, that’s not a typo), anyone? This will likely show up as a third tab in the database as an appendix to the individual volume tabs. We felt it was important to keep the volumes as they were separate for historical reasons, and we don’t want to add information that’s not present in the original database, so the onus will be on the user to research orthography before doing a search. But this will all be made clear in the document. Please have a look here:

Aberdeenshire Poll Book Volume 1 database

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If you are on a mobile device and the above expression is a bit crowded, or if you’d like to try your hand at searching the database, you may visit here:

As a view-only document for non-editors, you can still sort and copy data, but the filter is temporary. If you’d like a personal copy, it’s very easy to:

• Select all cells (Command+A or Control+A)
• Copy the data
• Open a new Google Sheet or Excel document
• Paste the data (there’s a lot, so there will be lag — be patient!)

With a personal copy, you can do so much more with sorting and analysis. And, for those who are concerned about licensing and whatnot: that publication is free of restriction. The content is in the public domain, and work done is purely derivative with no new original content, so no intellectual property rights may be claimed.

What do I plan to do with this data? Well, by now you all know my obsession with data visualization and mapping, so: a map of all the Cromar/Cromarrs as well as all the Robbs will be in the offing once Volume 2 and the orthography tool are done. What can you plan to do? The possibilities are many, so check back in as the new material is introduced. And don’t forget to thank my Canadian cousins for the lion’s share of this work!