Taxes have been around from the beginning of time.  What the government taxed people on sometimes just amazes me.  The hearth tax from 1662-1689 in England was one of those.  A tax for each hearth in a home was to be paid by the occupant of the home not the home owner.  The hearth tax return forms are a great resource for genealogists.  These lists provide the name of occupants of each home and the number of hearths.

As is in today’s world, there are those (the poor) who were exempt from these taxes, but were also listed on the tax return forms with their exempt status.  Errors, omissions, lost records, and poor penmanship are some of the reasons you may not find an ancestor on the lists, but with the number of years that the tax was in place, there is a good chance you will find some answers.

Amanda Bevan’s book on Tracing your Ancestors in the National Archives discusses in detail what records were kept and where to potentially find copies.