Taxed by Both Sides: The Double Burden of Frontier Families
The Revolution promised liberty, but not everyone found freedom in its unfolding. For many families living on the colonial frontier, the war did not arrive as ideology. It arrived as men on horseback, demanding grain, livestock, and allegiance. Sometimes they wore red. Sometimes they wore blue. Often, they came with no uniform at all, only orders to requisition supplies in the name of the cause. And if the cause was not yours, the cost still was.
Life on the frontier meant distance from the centers of political power. These were regions where counties blurred into wilderness, where news arrived late if it arrived at all. Many families who settled in western Pennsylvania, the Shenandoah Valley, or the Carolina backcountry had little to gain from either Parliament or Congress. They were often recent arrivals, working to clear land, raise barns, and survive seasons more than governments. But war does not ask who wants to participate. It finds you where you live. As British patrols moved through the backcountry to intimidate resistance and secure supply lines, they levied taxes, seized goods, and conscripted labor.
They took what they needed and warned against aiding the rebellion. But the Revolutionaries did the same. The Continental Army was often underfed and underfunded. Militia units would ride through to demand food, shelter, and payment in the form of contributions. For many families, the choice was not about loyalty. It was about survival. Some households gave corn to the Revolution one week and firewood to the King’s men the next. Not out of betrayal, but out of calculation. To defy either side was to invite destruction. To refuse a requisition was to risk losing your livestock or your home- or worse. For these families, neutrality was not cowardice. It was strategy. It was a way to live long enough to see another harvest.
There are records of entire communities caught between opposing raiding parties. One town might host a Revolutionary council by day and a British patrol by night. The burden fell hardest on the poor, the landless, and the newly arrived. Those without connections had no one to argue their case. They paid with what they had. Chickens. Salt. Time. Safety. This story rarely makes it into patriotic retellings. It complicates the image of a united people rising in common cause. But the mural allows room for that complexity. In one lower quadrant, a woman stands at the edge of a cabin door.
Behind her, children gather near a fire. Before her, a figure holds out a list of demands. His face is unreadable. He could be either side. The ambiguity is intentional. These scenes ask the viewer to reconsider the Revolution not just as a war for ideals, but as a war lived unevenly. For every speech given in Congress, there were ten households where that speech meant another pound of flour gone. Another fence broken. Another worry added to the long list already borne in silence.
We often remember the Revolution through its rhetoric. But on the frontier, it was measured in what was taken, not said. The families who endured it did not always get statues. They got through it by being clever, cautious, and sometimes invisible. They were taxed by both sides. But their story adds weight to what was being fought for. And to whom the victory truly belonged.
