AREA HISTORY:  Assessment of 1800, West Manchester Township, York County, PA

Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Kathy Francis

Copyright 2005.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/york/
_______________________________________________ 

History of York County, Pennsylvania.  John Gibson, Historical Editor.
Chicago: F. A. Battey Publishing Co., 1886.
_______________________________________________

ASSESSMENT OF 1800 – Page 622

The first assessment roll of West Manchester, in 1800, contains 150 taxable 
inhabitants, who were land owners, and 27 single men who paid a poll tax of $1.  
The entire property valuation then was $97,500.  The largest land owner was 
Frederick Eichelberger, who was assessed with 1,025 acres, valued at $7,925.  
Frederick Eichelberger was elected to the State senate in 1819.

Martin Ebert owned a distillery, tannery and 500 acres of land.  Weirick Bentz, 
George Eyster, Peter Hoke, Jacob Hoke, Michael Lau, Mathias Smyser, Adam Wolf 
and George Philip Ziegler, Esq., owned distilleries.  Much of the grain then 
raised in the township was manufactured into spirits, and sold in Baltimore.  
Henry Wolf and Thomas Eichelberger owned tanneries.  Henry Bare a fulling-mill 
and hemp-mill, Jacob King, Alexander Underwood and Jacob Steiner owned grist-
mills.  There was but one colored slave assessed – “Tom,” tradition says a good 
fellow, and outlived his master, Col. Michael Smyser, of Revolutionary fame, who 
was several times elected to the house of representatives and once to the senate 
of Pennsylvania.  He was one of a committee of twelve men from York County, who 
collected money to send to Boston in 1775, obtaining £6 2s. 1d, from his 
township.  The last years of his life he spent quietly and died in 1810 on a 
farm, on what is now the Berlin road about three miles from York.

One hundred and ninety horses were assessed and 270 cows in 1801.

The census of 1880 reports this township as having a population of 2,476, being 
exceeded in number of inhabitants, only by Spring Garden, Hopewell, Chanceford, 
Manchester, North Codorus and Lower Windsor.