Records Of Colonial Gloucester County Virginia

The middle chapters of this book are given over to Wilkes County genealogy and biography, with chapters on the buyers and sellers of lots and the early settlers of the county. The work as a whole is crowded with references to ministers, officials, teachers, and soldiers, so much so that an index of more than 2,000 entries was created by Mrs. Hays to encompass them.

By: Polly C. Mason, Pub. 1946, Reprinted 2016, 166 pages, Index, ISBN #0-89308-248-1. Gloucester County was created from York County in 1651. Its courthouse suffered two burnings, one in 1820 and the second in 1865. Most of the records were presumed destroyed or lost forever due to these fires. The author had discovered numerous files and records concerning this county located within the numerous volumes of records concerning the Colony of Virginia the clerk's office in Yorktown (York County), and various other county courthouses of Virginia. Records within this book are: Land Patents 1642-1790, Rent Rolls 1704/5, Tax Lists 1770-1782, Mathews County Tax Lists 1774-1791, members of the Burgesses Council and Court, and Land Patents for Gloucester in King & Queen County, VA.

Book lists records from 27 different archives and other sources, mainly found in Virginia. It supplements an earlier work: Records of Colonial Gloucester County, Virginia / by Polly Cary Mason.

Gloucester County was erected in 1751 and consisted of four parish subdivisions, including Kingston Parish, which was cut off from Gloucester in 1791 to form the present county of Mathews. The Register of Kingston Parish is one of the few colonial records from this area to have survived more or less intact. The authors have painstakingly copied the marriages, births, and deaths recorded in the Register, with the result that 530 marriages, 1750 births, and 120 deaths are incorporated into this present work. Some 6,000 persons are cited in the index.

"In this reprint edition the contents [of the original 34 volumes] have been rearranged, re-typed, and consolidated in three hardcover volumes, each with its own master index."--Title page verso.

Dr. Malcolm Harris' two-volume history and genealogy of "Old" New Kent County (the three present-day counties in the aggregate) is one of the great achievements of Virginia local history of the last century. Clearfield Company is honored to have been selected by the Harris family to produce this hardcover edition of "Old New Kent County." Privately published and out of print for many years, this work takes on even greater importance in light of the loss of county records in New Kent and in King & Queen counties and the survival of mere fragments for King William County prior to 1865.

More than a half-century ago, C. G. Chamberlayne, under the sponsorship of the Virginia State Library, transcribed, edited, and indexed a number of original Virginia parish vestry books, four of which are reprinted here. While the dates of coverage and lengths of the volumes vary, they are nonetheless similar in terms of scope and content. Each volume contains the oldest known records pertaining to that parish, in most cases beginning only a few years following the parish's date of formation. Mr. Chamberlayne begins each vestry book with an Introduction that pieces together the formation of the parish and important milestones in its history from published and original sources. Facsimilies of pages from the original vestry books, maps, and photographs help to put each volume into greater context, moreover. Appended to the vestry books are brief lists of the various parish ministers, with an indication of their earliest date of service as found in the records. The transcriptions themselves, ranging from about 250 to more than 600 pages of text, relate to the following issues growing out of the business affairs of colonial parish vestries; namely, payments to persons for services rendered to the parish, oaths and lists of oath-takers, news of the arrival of ministers, the appointment of church wardens, issues related to indentured servants, lists of tithables, payment of salaries and other obligations, the formation of parish precincts with the names of the families apportioned therein, the warding of children, and so on. In each case, these four scarce collections of colonial church records establish the existence of thousands of Virginia inhabitants, each of whom is easily found in the index or indexes at the back of the book.