The Library of Virginia’s Local Records Services branch, in partnership with the Montgomery County Circuit Court Clerk, was recently awarded a 2-year grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) to support the processing of the Montgomery County Circuit Court Records Collection, 1777-1912. The grant provides for the processing and indexing of the Montgomery County Chancery Causes with an eye toward future digitization as well as the creation of electronic finding aids for the remaining loose historical court records found in the clerk’s office in Christiansburg. The project will utilize a new strategy for the LVA in that all work will be completed by professional archivists in the clerk’s office rather than at the Archives in Richmond. 

The NHPRC recognized the national significance of the Montgomery County court records as the county was ideally situated on routes west to experience the travel and migration of  people seeking opportunity, land, and adventure in the West. These court records also illuminate the lives of numerous under-documented populations and have national significance for researchers interested in the African American experience, women’s history, westward migration, and southern labor and business history in the antebellum and post-Civil War periods.

In their current state, the Montgomery County chancery records are only known and utilized by a select few historians and humanities researchers. When completed the Montgomery County Chancery Causes will be indexed, and that index will be made public through the Chancery Records Index, greatly enhancing access to this valuable collection.

The project is tentatively scheduled to begin around 1 August 2013. Stay tuned to Out of the Box for future project updates on the important archival work being done in Montgomery County.

The Library of Virginia is pleased to announce the addition of Scott County and Washington County to the cohabitation register digitization project.  This project, via the Virginia Memory website, aims to index, digitize, transcribe, and provide access to all known Virginia cohabitation registers and the related registers of children whose parents had ceased to cohabit. The Scott and Washington registers are cohabitation registers only.  To date, their registers of children have not come to light.

Cohabitation registers are among the most important genealogical resources for African-Americans attempting to connect their family lines back through the oftentimes murky past to their enslaved ancestors. The registers date from 1866 and provide a snapshot in time for the individuals recorded therein and a wealth of information that may otherwise be impossible, or at least very difficult, to uncover. Cohabitation registers were the legal vehicles by which former slaves legitimized both their marriages and their children. The information about an individual person contained in a cohabitation register is literally priceless as it is often the first time that a former slave appeared officially in the public record and because of the extensive kinds of information that the register recorded.

The registers, transcriptions, and searchable index are available online along with the other registers from Virginia localities in the Cohabitation Register Digital Collection in Virginia Memory. To find it use either the link provided or go to Virginia Memory, choose Digital Collections, then Collections A to Z, and finally Cohabitation Registers.

For more information on cohabitation registers and the holdings at the Library of Virginia, see these earlier blog posts.

-Sarah Nerney, Senior Local Records Archivist

As the Commonwealth of Virginia’s archives and library, the Library of Virginia provides a wide variety of services to local public libraries and government agencies across the state. For example, the Library’s Local Records Services Branch and Circuit Court Records Preservation Program (CCRP), actively work with the commonwealth’s 120 circuit court clerks to help preserve their permanent records. Coordinating CCRP activities statewide necessitates a great deal of time on the road, and staff maintain a very ambitious travel schedule along with the projects that take place in Richmond. Often, we will receive a phone call or email from a clerk seeking advice on preservation grants, transferring records to the archives, or how best to preserve certain records in their office.

Recently we were contacted by Lancaster County Circuit Court Clerk Diane Mumford, who had discovered some old records as she unpacked boxes that had been moved from her old office to the new county Judicial Center.  Mumford recognized the age and significance of the documents and contacted the LVA for guidance on caring for the documents and what steps she should take to preserve them. Little excites an archivist (or a researcher for that matter!) more than the discovery of a group of old documents promising new information and avenues for research.

We quickly agreed on a date for us to visit and were pleased to discover upon arrival that among the stash of records was a fairly large group of chancery files dating from the 1840s to the early 1900s. These “lost” files would help fill in a mysterious gap in Lancaster’s chancery collection and will provide researchers access to over 2,000 additional chancery images. These records were added to the collection of Lancaster chancery files we had digitized in 2007 and are now available on the Chancery Records Index (CRI).  The discovered boxes also contained additional court records, including loose bonds and commissions with signatures of Patrick Henry, Benjamin Harrison, James Madison, John Tyler, and James Monroe among others.

A quick tour of the record room revealed a number of framed plats hanging throughout the clerk’s office as well as a large “Historic Plats” book containing a number of elaborately drawn plats. A little detective work quickly led to the discovery that many of the plats were related to chancery files that had already been scanned and added to the CRI. Created as exhibits in land disputes, the plats had been separated from their corresponding case files many years prior as a way of providing ease of access for title researchers and other visitors to the clerk’s office. These colorful and ornate plats, created by the county’s surveyors as key pieces of evidence in chancery files, were long presumed lost by archivists.

Given the elaborate nature of the plats, they make for an interesting study that goes well beyond their informational content. The majority of the plats were created by three men: Thomas S. Dunaway, Robert W. Eubank, and Robert Alexander (all three are noted on the documents as county surveyors). The trio obviously invested a great deal of time and talent in creating what was often done in a very simple, often crude manner by other surveyors. The Lancaster surveyors added fine detail, such as colorful flowers and leaves, bodies of water, small and meticulous renderings of homes, and embellishing the compass and edges of documents. It is not clear why the surveyors employed such colorful and detailed flourishes in their work, but now that they have been reunited with the proper case file they can be used for their informational value as well as appreciated as works of art.

After consulting with Ms. Mumford on best preservation practices, she readily agreed to allow us to take the plat book, framed plats, and the loose papers back to the LVA facility for closer inspection.  The original plats were removed from the plat book and frames and sent to our in-house conservation lab for cleaning, mending, and stabilization prior to being scanned and reunited with their proper case file. High-resolution color prints were created and inserted into the “Historic Plats” book as well as in the picture frames. Both the plat book and framed plats were returned to the clerk’s office and are readily accessible to researchers. A bound color copy of the bonds and commissions was also created for the clerk’s office while the original chancery case files were processed, indexed, and added to the Chancery Records Index.

-Carl Childs, Local Records Services Director

The Library of Virginia, in partnership with the Rockingham County Circuit Court Clerk’s Office, is pleased to announce that the indexing and digitization of Rockingham County’s historic chancery causes is now complete and available online through the Chancery Records Index on the LVA’s Virginia Memory site.

The RockinghamCounty chancery collection covers the years 1781 to 1913 and are a valuable source of local, state, social, and legal history. They often contain correspondence; property lists: including slaves; lists of heirs; and vital statistics that reveal detailed stories that help tell the story of Virginia. Cases contain useful biographical, genealogical, and historical information and document a broad spectrum of citizens—rich and poor, black and white, slave and free. (See this earlier blog post for a description of interesting suits covering the issue of slavery found in the chancery causes for the years 1781-1893.)

In addition, the economic boom of the 1880s, and subsequent bust that followed the Panic of 1893, plays out in the chancery causes. Suits 1903-128 and 1909-088 contain prospectuses laying out the grand plans of two land improvement companies that became casualties of that financial downturn. The schemes for new towns, grand hotels, and railroad lines in RockinghamCounty and other parts of the Valley collapsed along with the railroad and banking industries of the U. S., and the creditors and shareholders of the companies invested in Virginia sought redress in the court of chancery.

Voices from the past from men and women of all walks of life reveal themselves in these case files, helping to tell a more complete story of Virginia. The records held in Virginia’s 120 circuit courts are among the richest documentary sources available in the commonwealth. Researchers absolutely need to consult these records, especially the chancery causes, in order to fully understand the complex and interwoven history of their region, its inhabitants, the nation, and the world.

The Rockingham County Chancery Causes, 1781-1913, join the growing list of localities whose chancery causes have been made accessible through the Library’s innovative Circuit Court Records Preservation Program. The CCRP seeks to preserve the historic records of Virginia’s Circuit Courts and, since 2005, has posted nearly 8 million digital images from 60 localities.

Virginia’s agricultural production, as well as its economy, was dominated by tobacco for over three centuries, ever since John Rolfe sent his first shipment of tobacco to England in 1614. Growth of the Virginia colony and extension into the interior meant more soil and larger crops of tobacco. Despite the continuous growth in production, the tobacco trade was plagued by falling prices and decreased quality. By the 1720s, tobacco exports included large quantities of inferior product that even included shipments of “trash” tobacco—shipments that diluted tobacco leaves with foreign substances such as household sweepings. Consequently the price of tobacco sank so low that many planters struggled to recover production costs.

In 1723 Virginia’s General Assembly passed the first of its Tobacco Acts that attempted to control the quantity and quality of tobacco grown in the colony because it was believed that “most of the ffrauds [sic] and mischiefs which have been complained of in the Tobacco Trade” had arisen from the “planting on land not proper for producing good Tobacco” and the production of “greater Crops than the persons employed therein are able duly to tend.” The 1723 act established limits on the number of plants that certain classes of persons could grow with slave owners being allowed fewer plants. Each vestry of every parish had to appoint two people every year to count the number of plants being grown and report the numbers to the clerk of court by the month of August. Any number of plants over the allowed number were to be destroyed by the planter or, if the planter would not, by the counters. The act of 1729 provided various adjustments to and elaborations on the 1723 act. (For full text of the acts see The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography Vol. 20, pp.158-178.)

Accomack County (Va.) Census of Tobacco Plants, 1725, 1728-1729, consists of three lists of tobacco plants created to comply with the Tobacco Acts. The 1725 list records the names of tithable persons, half shares, and the number of tobacco plants grown. The precinct is not given although the counters state that this list was drawn up at the order of the vestry at the MiddleChurch. The 1728 list records the names of all tithable persons and how many plants they were growing along with the number of plots or plantations in which the crop was being grown. Slave names are given along with their owners. A total of the number of plants in the county is given at the end of the list. The 1729 list is for the second precinct and records the same information as the 1728 list although without the land information.

The 1723 and 1729 Tobacco Acts led to the passing of the Virginia Tobacco Inspection Act of 1730 that transformed the tobacco trade by regulating the quality of tobacco exports which created increased revenues for Virginia planters.

The Accomack County (Va.) Census of Tobacco Plants, 1725, 1728-1729, (Barcode 1204975) is open for research and available at the Library of Virginia.

-Sarah Nerney, Senior Local Records Archivist

Individuals today wishing to conduct research using Rockingham County court records may encounter a few stumbling blocks. Due to two major events in the locality’s history, Rockingham County is identified as one of Virginia’s Lost Record localities. The first loss of Rockingham records occurred in 1787 when a courthouse fire destroyed primarily wills and estate records. A second and even more devastating loss came during the Civil War.

In June 1864, with the threat of Union troops advancing into the valley, concerned citizens of the county wanted court records (mostly volumes) removed from the courthouse so that the records could not be destroyed. A judge granted permission for these records to be moved to a safer place east of the Blue Ridge.  A teamster and wagon were hired to remove the records, but the wagon was left on the Port Republic-Forge road after a rim was lost and a tire came off. During this delay, Union troops spied the wagon and partially destroyed the records by setting fire to it.  The mother of a Confederate soldier extinguished the fire by carrying water and smothering the fire with green hay just cut from a nearby field.  She retrieved what was left of the records and took them to her home for safekeeping.  The records remained at her home for quite some time, and because the records were not carefully guarded, individuals came and took records related to themselves or their families.  Eventually, what records remained were returned to the courthouse; however, many order books, deed books, will books and fiduciary books were lost or severely damaged by the fire. 

In 2005, a Library of Virginia researcher made a startling discovery—he came across a box of miscellaneous loose and bound documents.  It so happened that this box contained burnt fragments of Rockingham County’s original wills and administrations (including estate inventories and guardians’ accounts) saved from that wagon fire in 1864. The history behind how the Library of Virginia came to acquire these records is found in the locality accession records. The files for Rockingham County date from 1864 to 2010 and offer two possibilities. The first and best possibility is that the records came from Duke University which returned 18,000 items and 121 volumes to the LVA on 22 June 1951 (accession 23707).  The second possibility (accession 25144) is that the records were purchased as part of 1,500 items from the Chesapeake Book Company on 1 April 1960.

Because of the extensive damage to the perimeter of many of the pages and to prevent further loss of valuable information, the more fragile items were sent to the Library’s in-house conservation lab. Pages were encapsulated and returned for the difficult task of historical reconstruction. As a result of the fire damage, pagination and recorded dates were effectively removed. The time consuming task of reconstruction was handed over to one of Local Records Services’ most experienced archivists, Louise Jones. She devised an elaborate scheme for painstakingly researching and reconstructing the original volumes for microfilm purposes.  Her work encompassed various steps to organize the items into will books.  The first step involved taking notes from county order books to determine which documents were recorded on which dates. For pages burnt on all four edges, she determined which side of the page was the spine side.  Next, she looked at the page to see if she could find the name of the deceased and the date the document was recorded.  For pages without dates or names of the deceased, she denoted the type of document and then looked for names and dates within the documents. If the document was an estate sale, she noted the names of the purchasers and compared the names to the list of purchasers in other estate sales. Comparing unique items sold with items listed in inventories helped determine the name of the deceased. For her final step, she compared handwriting, the darkness or lightness of the ink, page size, and the color of the paper or water stains to determine where the page belonged in the will book.

Nine volumes were painstakingly reconstructed dating from 1803 to 1862. Once reconstructed, the original volumes were microfilmed in-house by the staff of OCLC Preservation Service Center (now Backstage Library Works). The nine microfilm reels generated were made available to the public in 2005.  The volumes were then retired to the State Records Center because of their fragile nature.

The Rockingham County Wills and Administrations, 1803-1862 (Microfilm Reels 667-675), are available for research at the Library of Virginia and the Rockingham County Circuit Clerk’s Office. Additional Rockingham County court records can be found in the Lost Records Localities Digital Collection. More information on the digital collection can be found in this previous blog post.

-Callie Lou Freed, Local Records Archivist

The plaintiff, R. E. Gatewood, filed a civil suit against the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company in James City County Circuit Court on 3 November 1884.  In his statement to the court, Gatewood blamed C&O Railway for a fire that caused extensive damage to his property on 14 October 1884.  Greenwood claimed that a C&O steam locomotive passing through his property did not have a spark arrestor or, if it did, the spark arrestor was not working properly. (A spark arrestor was a wire netting designed to prevent sparks or other tiny flaming debris from escaping the locomotive’s “balloon stack.”)  As a result of the “careless negligence” of the defendant, the plaintiff’s property was set on fire by sparks emitted from the steam locomotive.  Valuable timber including oak, chestnut, walnut, and pine worth $370 were destroyed by the fire as well as chestnut rail fences worth $30.  Gatewood demanded $400 in compensation for the severe injury done to him by the C&O Railway Company.

No rebuttal by C&O Railway Company to Gatewood’s statements was found in the suit.  However, the two oversize exhibits, the plat and the illustration of the engine boiler, were produced by C&O Railway Company perhaps to show a) the extent of damage by the fire was not as much as the plaintiff alleged and b) all C&O steam locomotives were equipped with spark arrestors.  The tiny arrows show how the mixture of cinders and ash flow through the locomotive, up the balloon stack, and into the spark arrestor.  What I found interesting is that the illustration shows some cinder and ash making it past the spark arrestor.  I believe the reason why is that C&O Railway Company wanted to make the point that, while the spark arrestor does a great job preventing most of the cinder and ash from escaping the balloon stack, it does not catch them all.  Consequently, the escaping cinder and ash could start a fire such as the one on Gatewood’s property, but the cause of the fire was accidental and not “careless negligence” on the part of C&O Railway Company.

In its verdict in June 1885, the jury sided with the plaintiff, Gatewood; however, he had to come away from the trial extremely disappointed.  The jury assessed the damages done to his property by C&O Railway Company at $32.55.  Apparently, the two exhibits produced by C&O Railway Company influenced the jury’s decision.  Was C&O Railway and Company responsible for the fire?  Yes.  But was the fire due to “careless negligence” on the part of the railroad company and the damage caused by the fire as extensive as Gatewood claimed?  No.  The only consolation for Gatewood was that he received just enough money to buy new chestnut rail fences.  

The James City County/Williamsburg Judgments, 1877-1891, are open for research and available at the Library of Virginia.

-Greg Crawford, Local Records Services Coordinator

The Library of Virginia is pleased to announce that the first digital images from the Rockingham County Chancery Causes are now available on the Chancery Records Index. This initial addition covers the time period from 1781 to 1893.

Following are a few suits of interest found in this first group of digital images. Rockingham County Chancery Cause 1850-002 offers a reflection on the sectional division over slavery within the national Methodist Episcopal Church on the local church level. The suit includes numerous depositions given by pastors and members that present a vivid description of the bitter division within the congregation. Rockingham County Chancery Causes 1874-051 and 1884-126 are estate disputes that have their origins in the Civil War. In the first suit, former slaves sued for their share of their former master’s estate left to them in his will. The latter suit includes exhibits detailing the destruction done to the estate of Edward H. Smith by Federal troops. A divorce suit, 1885-206, contains letters from the husband’s paramour along with a photograph of her wearing a ring belonging to his estranged wife.

Check back as more Rockingham County chancery images will be added in the future.

-Greg Crawford, Local Records Coordinator

Interested in commercial fishing techniques used in Virginia’s Northern Neck around the turn of the 20th century? Take a look through the Northumberland County circuit court records.

Around 1895, Earnest Krentz and Lanius B. Williams entered into a partnership to harvest fish from the Potomac River near Hack Creek using fish traps or weirs. Krentz supplied the equipment and Williams constructed and managed the traps. Following Krentz’s death in 1900, his widow, Dolly, contracted with another person to use the equipment, and conflict arose between her and Williams over who controlled the sites that had been used while Earnest lived. She claimed that the two sites were owned by the partnership and should be divided between them. Williams countered that he alone was entitled to both locations. In the spring of 1901, Dolly sued Williams (Northumberland County Chancery Cause 1902-010, Dolly Krentz, widow, etc. vs. Lanius B. Williams) on the chancery side of the Northumberland County circuit court to prevent him from interfering with her use of the most profitable spot. After hearing from both sides and reviewing the evidence, the judge ultimately sided with Williams and dismissed Dolly’s suit.

Out of the testimony and exhibits in this suit, a detailed depiction emerges of the equipment, terms, construction designs, and customs surrounding the use of fish traps in this area. For instance, when an individual chose a site for his weir, he installed a pole at the spot and attached a green bush to the top of it to indicate that he intended to occupy that particular location. After “bushing a stand,” custom demanded that other fishermen place their traps no closer than roughly 1,200 yards. Additionally, diagrams submitted as evidence in this case show the locations of other traps in that portion of the river and list their owners’ names.

The Northumberland County Chancery Causes, 1759-1912 (bulk 1786-1912), join the growing list of localities whose chancery causes have been digitized and made available on the Chancery Records Index through the Library’s innovative Circuit Court Records Preservation Program (CCRP).

-Sam Walters, Local Records Archivist

On 17 April 1875, Anna Williams of 313 Canal Street in Richmond heard a noise and went outside to investigate only to discover a plank pulled off of her hen house and a man “breaking chicken necks.”   Emmet W. Ruffin, a neighbor enlisted to assist her, later testified as to what happened next., “I jumped back and drew my knife and waited for him to come out…. Just then the man jumped out of the chicken house and threw a handful of sand or dirt in my eyes…. As soon as I got the sand out of my eyes, I went after him… and struck him with the knife as he was going over the fence.”  The thief dropped some of the chickens inside the yard, but Ruffin continued to follow him.  Shortly, a chase ensued, with people joining in and crying “murder” and “thief.”   Some members of the group began throwing stones.  One struck the thief on the side of his head knocking him to the ground.  The chicken thief, later identified as Robert Bland, never got back up.

The Richmond coroner’s statement reveals that the chicken thief came to his death from a stab wound, inflicted by Emmet W. Ruffin, received while engaged in stealing chickens. The jury was of the opinion that Ruffin “[deserved] the thanks of the community for his action under the circumstances.”

The testimony and investigation into the death of Robert Bland, dated 18 April 1875, can be found in the Richmond Coroners’ Inquisitions. The collection is available at the Library of Virginia but is currently closed for processing.

In April 2013, almost 138 years later, chickens are again making headlines in the city of Richmond.  City Council will be considering an ordinance that would allow residents to have chickens, and will vote on it on 8 April. A pro-hen group, Chickunz, along with other local chicken advocates, is helping spearhead this effort. 

As far as stealing hens goes, as Robert Bland discovered chickens do come home to roost. 

-Mary Dean Carter, Local Records Archival Assistant