Census returns are some of the first records that a genealogist turns to when studying a new family line. Unfortunately for Madison County, as well as Virginia as a whole, both the 1790 and 1800 census reports for that state are lost. While the reason for their loss is argued, they nevertheless no longer exist. While personal property tax and land tax lists (which date from 1782) can be used to give some information about individuals, they do not give the researcher a glimpse into family composition or a snapshot of the county as a whole. Hence Madison's 1810 census is the first real window we have from the census records of this county which had been settled a century before and whose western boundary was the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
John Vogt
2007
107-MD10
