The Colonial Virginia Books You Should Have in Your Library
The Colonial Virginia Books You Should Have in Your Library
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases
Video transcript (lightly edited for clarity):
I've been asked to talk about what books I would use for colonial Virginia research and that's actually one of my favorite topics so it should be very easy for me just to talk about it.
You have to remember in genealogy you always have to go from what you know and there’s a couple of problems with Virginia research.
One of them is your research doesn't start in Virginia and all you know is that they're from Virginia and you have to figure out where they're from in Virginia. That's probably the major problem because you always have to go from what you know and not as many people stayed in Virginia as you might think.
And the other problem about colonial Virginia research is that it's colonial Virginia research. Some counties are very well covered. Some counties burned and are not very well covered and sometimes you need alternatives.
But you always have to get a lay of the land first and there are couple of books that are very good for getting the lay of the land of Virginia research.
One of them is the National Genealogical Society Research in the States Guide to Virginia. That's an important book to have. I reference it every so often. Once you've used it for a while you'll get used to it and know where everything is in it and after a while you get to know what's in it.
Another is a book called Virginia Genealogy: Sources and Resources. That's been updated in the past couple of years. It's published by Genealogical Publishing Company, a company that Heritage Books … we appreciate all of our customers all the time. We also sell Genealogical Publishing Company books, and this is one of them, as are a few others that I'll talk about today.
Getting either of or both of these books will allow you to get a lay of the land. Now there are a couple of specific books.
Also is a book by the Virginia Genealogical Society on colonial handwriting in Virginia, A Guide to 17th Century Virginia Court Handwriting.
There also is a book by Kip Sperry on Reading Early American Handwriting and one by Stryker-Rodda on Understanding Colonial Handwriting.
All three of those together pretty much run the gamut of what colonial handwriting looks like.
Since they didn't have typewriters you're going to have to deal with Colonial handwriting. And the only way that you can deal with colonial handwriting is to constantly deal with colonial handwriting. Practice makes perfect.
Sending words to people and asking them to help you figure out what they are doesn’t work very well unless you give them the entire context. A single word snap is just not going to work. Because many times it's the context that counts.
The next thing I would look at is what county I care about. Now maybe I haven’t established a county, because again this person was in Kentucky, and they said they were from Virginia or Tennessee, and I don't know what county they're in.
My number one go-to resource for trying to figure out what county someone was in is Netti Schreiner-Yantis’ 1787 tax lists.
I use it actually every time I'm looking for somebody in Virginia. I could be looking for somebody in Virginia after 1800, after the colonial period and I'm still going to look at the 1787 tax list.
You're going to say, well, 1787 is not the colonial period, Craig. I will say to you, yes, but anybody who's on the tax list as a head of household in 1787 is probably 21 years old at least so that will get them back to the colonial period.
And what I also look for when I'm using this three-volume set - largely I use the index, which is the third volume. Unfortunately, this book is out of print and they're just so few copies left that it's so expensive that you'll have to go to the library to use it.
Except that there are individual counties, so the secret is finding the index, finding out what counties people are in, and then going and purchasing the individual county booklets.
What I look for there is surname distribution through the counties in 1787. That helps me narrow down what's going on. Now another thing that I might do is go to Torrence. Torrence deals with wills in Virginia up to 1800.
There are other books by Pippenger that are 10 volumes that deal with wills after 1800 which are also very useful, but again Colonial period is what we're really talking about today, so Torrence’s Virginia Wills and Administrations. I use it in the same way, to try to figure out what county somebody might be in.
Having pretty much established the county, or hopefully established the county, I'm then going to begin to collect the books about the county. Because you're not going to be able to do research in the county without books about the county.
The two places I'm going to go largely, the books I'm going to look for are the marriage series done by John Vogt and T. William Kethley, Jr. over the years, many years ago, and those are at the county level.
There are also other marriage books. It doesn't cover everywhere, but a majority of them are the John Vogt marriage books.
I'm also going to look at the Antient Press books for the county if we are fortunate enough that Antient Press did books on the county. Antient Press did Northern Tidewater counties, Northern Neck counties, for the most part.
You want to look for those and those could be will books. They could be deed books.
They could be order books. I especially like order books.
Another set of books that I like for counties in the colonial period are road orders. The Virginia Department of Transportation created many years ago, several publications about road orders. They gave permission to the Virginia Genealogical Society to reprint, and Virginia had Heritage Books do those for them. Those are available here.
I also have a Legacy talk on how to use road orders, a webinar on those. (As a Legacy webinar speaker, I earn from qualifying purchases that you make with this link.)
There's another set of books that I like to use, especially if I'm doing Revolutionary War research.
Everyone in Virginia is in the militia unless they are levy-free. The court has determined that they're too old, they're infirm or whatever and they don't have to serve anymore. But everybody's in the militia.
So there are some opportunities for muster rolls and payrolls and those kinds of things.
Now the two number one sources in Virginia are Murtie June Clark’s Colonial Soldiers of the South in Hardcover or Paperback. For those of you who aren't too interested in Virginia itself, there are people from New York in that book because those people served in the South in some British units. Unfortunately, that book is out of print, and it doesn't look like it's going to be reprinted, so if you can find a copy of that book and you intend on being a supercalifragilistic Virginia researcher you're going to need that book.
Another is Lloyd Bockstruck’s book on Virginia's Colonial Soldiers. These are soldiers before the Revolution. I always want to see if somebody was a soldier before the Revolution before they served in the Revolution. Both these books are colonial soldiers.
Now another book that probably you wouldn't think of using because it doesn't actually relate to Virginia is Hank Peden’s book on Maryland Colonial Soldiers. The reason I bring it up is because of the conflict between Cromwell and the King, we have royalists, and we have roundheads or whatever they are. I forget what they are off the top of my head.
Anyway, what we see is a swapping of people between Virginia and Maryland in the 1600s. So if you find somebody in Virginia and all of a sudden you can't find them anymore and it doesn't look like they imported themselves into Virginia, you want to look in Tidewater Maryland to find them.
There's two other series of books that you're going to want to get, especially if you're doing the deep dive into this kind of thing. The first one is the eight volume set of Cavaliers and Pioneers. These are the records of the Virginia Land Office.
There is a thing called headrights. If you import someone into the colony of Virginia and you pay for their passage, you get 50 acres. Recognize that most of the people coming to Virginia end up being indentured servants. People have to pay for their passage, they get headrights for it that kind of thing.
Eight volumes, three published by the Library of Virginia and the rest published by the Virginia Genealogical Society. All available from Heritage Books.
I use those often. They're important to colonial Virginia research because they let you know when people sort of arrive and sort of where they're going to end up. Sort of, not specifically necessarily, but sort of.
Now there are two series of books, one by Joyner and one by Gray and they deal with the Northern Neck. The Lord Fairfax’s proprietary is not covered by Cavaliers and Pioneers so you have to use Gray’s Virginia land grants, Northern Neck land grants, and you have to use Joyner’s Northern Neck Warrants and Surveys. Joyner’s surveys are actually quite nice. I enjoy them very much.
Gray is by timeframe and Joyner is by county. so you want to look at those also. and those deal with land records.
Now these are all patents, so these are not deed books. If you saw a deed in like an Antient Press book and you couldn't find where that person got the land from, you might have to refer to Joyner or Gray to see if you could figure out where the patent was.
A patent is where land is transferred from the government to an individual. A deed is where land is transferred from person to person.
And then one last series of books. One last three volume set that makes my day and it's probably my favorite of all the Virginia books. That's Adventurers of Purse and Person. It’s rather thick, rather expensive, but it covers almost five generations of Virginians.
My ancestor’s in it, I have a person who arrives in 1619, John Woodson. Many of you are related to John Woodson. I'm fortunate, if you know John Woodson's story. I'm a tub Woodson and a potato bin Woodson both. I always knew I was one because my grandfather told me that I was a potato bin Woodson, but because of Dorman's Adventurers of Purse and Person I was able to establish that I was also a tub Woodson.
I have a marriage of two people in just about the time of the Revolution. His name is Woodson Parsons. He’s five generations removed from Woodson Parsons [sic, should be John Woodson], and he marries Nancy Ann Mosby, who is also a descendant of John Woodson and there are five different ways that they descend from John Woodson together. It explains a lot about me and all of this is in Adventurers of Purse and Person.
What I've attempted to do today is to give you some idea at a very sort of high level about what we can do about researching colonial Virginia history and what resources should be available to you to use from the perspective of books.
Now recognize there are other things online that you can deal with. The chancery suits are online, and I should at some time talk about chancery suits because they helped me solve one of those Parson problems that I had in that family I was just talking about.
To recap:
- Find the general books, Grundset’s National Genealogical Society Research in the States: Guide to Virginia or McGinnis’ book on Virginia Genealogy: Sources and Resources or both of them.
- Determine what county they're actually in. You can use Netti Schreiner-Yantis’ 1787 tax lists or you can use Torrence’s index to Virginia wills to do that kind of thing.
- Then get the books for the county from Iberian. The Iberian marriage books or others. Get the Antient Press books for the orders, the wills, the deeds.
- And there also some tax lists that the Sparacios published as part of that series. The Sparacios have 550 almost books that they did. They're all available from Heritage Books, mostly. About 38 of them currently are out of print and we're working on that. We've brought that number down quite significantly in the past year, year and a half.
- Don't forget the Virginia's Colonial Soldiers by Bockstruck and Murtie June Clark’s Colonial Soldiers of the South and don't forget Cavaliers and Pioneers.
- And if you're in the Northern Neck, Joyner and Gray and then Adventurers of Purse and Person.
If you would like me to put together a talk on some other state about what I would use in the colonial period or actually if you've got questions that deal with books that you think I think you should have, just ask me in the comments.
Other helpful resources for early Virginia genealogy:
