Virginia Owns Extensive Colonial Records

‘There was time when all of America was Virginia,” Bette Topp told members of the Eastern Washington Genealogical Society last March.

“West Virginia became a state in 1863 during the Civil War when the northwestern part of Virginia chose to remain loyal to the U.S. government and the rest of the state went Rebel,” she said.

Topp was asked to present this program because of the expertise she’s gained researching her ancestry that traces back to the Mountain State, which, incidentally, also chose the rhodendron as its state flower.

If you have early Virginian ancestry and feel it’s something to brag about, Topp said, consider this: Between 1619 and 1640, England sent many felons and criminals to this new colony to replace those who’d died in earlier settlements because of poor planning and being totally unprepared.

Other early settlers into Virginia came from the north, through the fertile farming valleys of the Shenandoah. The mountains made traveling difficult, but the glorious reports of Virginia land was great motivation. They needed farms to support their large families.

Virginia’s Colonial period was from 1607 to 1776. Some of the first colonial legislation in 1610 mandated that ministers record birth and death statistics from their parishes, but, unfortunately, few of these early records survived.

Despite that loss, however, Virginia probably still has more records available than most other states, Topp said.

Marriage bond documents, beginning in 1661, are an excellent genealogy source.

The colony of Virginia actively sought new settlers and offered a 50-acre headright (or grant of land) for every person arriving in the colony. If a man brought his wife and five children, he received seven headright grants. Many shrewd capitalists gained enormous tracts of land by bringing in whole congregations of settlers.

By the late 1700s, European colonists wanted to push up into the mountains of what would become West Virginia. The Treaty of 1763, however, made it illegal for whites to settle there and the British inflamed Native Americans to attack the many Scotch-Irish who moved in anyway.

That part of Virginia became known as the Land of Bloody Ground because of the many battles between whites and the area’s tribes.

There were 30,000 colonists in what would become West Virginia at the start of the Revolutionary War in 1776. About 100 years later, when the Civil War began in 1861, there were 350,000 settlers.

“There are more books on Virginia and West Virginia than I can count,” Topp said at the conclusion of her talk. “And the Family History Library has more microfilmed records than you could check in a week.”

She advised those doing research on the Virginias to visit their local libraries to see what books are on the shelves, and the Family History Centers to order microfilmed records.

It sounds like the easiest reason to fail researching in Virginia or West Virginia is not to check all the available resources.

Topp offered a one-page handout with her presentation, which she will share with you if you mail me a large self-addressed stamped envelope in care of the paper.

Today’s Trivia: Send your Louisiana queries to newspaper columnist Erin Wallace Mangiapane, c/o The News Banner, P.O. Box 90, Covington, LA 70434.