King William County Virginia History and Genealogy

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King William County Virginia

In keeping with the prior name of the older county, the new portion divided from it in 1702 was titled in honor of the same king, William III. It was formed from the portion of King and Queen County lying in Pamunkey Neck, i.e., between the Pamunkey and Mattaponi rivers. In 1720 and 1727 upper portions of King William County were cut off to form parts of Spotsylvania and Caroline counties, respectively. Most of the county's records were destroyed in a fire which gutted the county clerk's office on 17 January 1885. Only a few deed books survived the burning.

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KING WILLIAM COUNTY, VA 1810 SUBSTITUTE CENSUS [Abstracts from the 1810 Personal Property Tax List] by John Vogt, 2011, 5 1/2"x8 1/2" format, viii, 10 pages, map.
King William is one of eighteen Virginia counties for which the 1810 census is lost. In August, 1814 British troops occupied Washington, DC and public buildings were put to the torch. In the destruction that followed, numerous early records of the government were lost, including all of Virginia's 1790 and 1800 census reports, as well as eighteen county lists for the state's most recent [1810] federal census. Although two "fair copies" of each county's census had been left in the counties for public display, these were ephemeral lists and not preserved, and by 1814 they too had been mislaid, lost, or destroyed. Hence, the closest document available we have to reconstruct a partial image of the missing county lists is the personal property tax list.
According to research notes by Minor T. Weisiger, Library of Virginia archivist: "Information recorded in Virginia personal property tax records changed gradually from 1782 to 1865. The early laws required the tax commissioner in each district to record in "a fair alphabetical list" the names of the person chargeable with the tax, the names of white male tithables over the age of twenty-one, the number of white male tithables between ages sixteen and twenty-one, the number of slaves both above and below age sixteen, various types of animals such as horses and cattle, carriage wheels, ordinary licenses, and even billiard tables. Free Negroes are listed by name and often denoted in the list as "free" or "FN."
The present abstract of King William's 1810 personal property tax list is NOT a transcript of the entire document; rather, it is a summary of three items important in delineating the 1810 "substitute" census for this county, i.e., number of male tithables 16 and older, number of slaves twelve years and older, and the number of horses. The original form of the census was in alphabetic order by date and letter. The substitute list presented here is in absolute alphabetic order for easy reference.

In the current volume, the data is recorded thus:
Beck, Robert 1 - 2
Bellama, John 1 - 1
Booker, Richard E. 1 - -
Bouldin, Green 2 6 5
Column one represents the tithable males (16 and over) in the household; column 2 is the number of slaves over 12; and the final column is the number of horses, mares or mules.
For genealogical researchers in this 1810 period, personal property tax records may provide additional important information. Oftentimes, juniors and seniors are listed adjacent to one another and recorded on the same day. When a taxpayer is noted as "exempt", it can be a clue to someone holding a particular position in government or being elderly, infirm, or for some other reason no longer required to pay the tithable tax. Women, both black and white, appear occasionally as heads of households when they own property in their own right or as the widow of a property owner.
Another valuable source for filling in information about an ancestor is the land tax record, and especially the one for 1815. In that year, the enumerators began to add the location of the property in relation to the county court house. Roger Ward has abstracted all of the 1815 land tax records, and they are available from this publisher at www.iberian.com.
The 1810 substitute census list for King William County contains 766 households, 760 tithables, both white and free black, and 3,070 slaves over the age of twelve, and 1,793 horses.

SURNAMES included in the 1810 personal property list are:
Abraham; Abrahams; Acree; Adams; Alexander; Allen; Alvey; Ancarrow; Anderson; Armstrong; Atkins; Atkinson; Avera; Aylette;

Bagwell; Bailey; Ball; Banks; Barrett; Bassett; Batchelder; Beadles; Bennett; Berkeley; Bingham; Bird; Blackerby; Blackwell; Blake; Bond; Bosher; Boswell; Boudon; Bowen; Bowles; Bradberry; Bradford; Braxton; Brenan; Brett; Brisbon; Broach; Bromfield; Brooke; Brown; Buckner; Burke; Burnes; Burrus; Butler;

Camp; Campbell; Cardwell; Carter; Caslin; Catlett; Chamberlayne; Chick; Christian; Claiborne; Claybrooke; Clements; Cobb; Cobbett; Cocke; Cockrum; Coleman; Collins; Cottorell; Courtney; Crabbin; Crafton; Cragg; Crouch; Crow; Croxton; Crump; Custis;

Dabney; Daniel; Davis; Deffarges; Devenport; Devinport; Dew; Digges; Dogged; Dover; Dreevidz; Drewry; Driver; Dudley; Dugar; Duke; Dungey; Dylscow?;

Edmonds; Edwards; Ellett; Elliott; Eubank; Evans;

Fazer; Figg; Fleet; Floyd; Fogg; Foster; Fox; Frazer;

Gaines; Garlick; Garnett; Gary; Gatewood; Glover; Grant; Gravet; Gregory; Gresham; Grinstead; Gunn; Gunter; Guthrow; Gwathmey;

Hagenaw; Hargrove; Harris; Harvey; Hawes; Hay; Heath; Henley; Hickman; Hill; Hillard; Hillyard; Hinshaw; Hollins; Holt; Hoomis; Hooper; Horn; Hornet; Houchen; Howard; Huckstep; Hughes; Humphrey; Hutcherson; Huxter;

Johnson; Jones;

King;

Lambeth; Landrum; Lane; Langborne; Langston; Leftwich; Leigh; Levert; Lipscomb; Littlepage; Longest; Lord; Lukhard; Lumpkin; Lyle; Lyons;

Madison; Mahon; Mallory; Manley; Mann; Mattox; McGeorge; McGraw; McNab; Meaux; Mennon; Meredith; Merick; Mill; Mills; Minor; Mitchell; Monday; Moore; Morrison; Morriss;

Napper; Neale; Nelson; New; Newman; Nunn;

O'Neale; O'Neil; Oliver;

Palmer; Pannell; Pannill; Parker; Patterson; Paye; Pemberton; Pendleton; Philips; Pigg; Pollard; Powell; Powers; Prince; Puller;

Quarles;

Redd; Reddock; Reynolds; Rice; Richards; Richardson; Richeson; Roane; Roberts; Robinson; Rogers; Rose; Row; Rowe; Roy; Ruffin;

Sale; Salewhite; Samuel; Saunders; Scott; Seale; Seaszor; Seay; Seazor; Segar; Shackleford; Shadwick; Shelton; Shirley; Simpkins; Skyren; Slaughter; Smith; Southerland; Spencer; Spiller; Spurlock; Starke; Starling; Stewart; Sullins; Sullivan; Swett;

Taliaferro; Taylor; Temple; Terry; Thomas; Tignor; Timberlake; Timmer; Todd; Toler; Tombs; Tomlin; Tompkins; Torrent; Trant; Trimmer; Tuck; Turner; Twisdale;

Valentine; Viah;

Waide; Walden; Walker; Waller; Ware; Wasley; Waters; Watkins; Webb; West; Wheeley; Wheiley; White; Whitlock; Willeroy; Williams; Williamson; Wilson; Winfrey; Winn; Wollard; Wood; Wooddy; Word; Wormley; Wright; Wyatt;

[KGWMPP] $5.00 (printed version)

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[EKGWMPP] $3.00 (electronic version)

THE PARISH REGISTER OF SAINT PETER'S, NEW KENT COUNTY, VIRGINIA, 1680-1787
PUBLISHED by National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Virginia, rICHMONF, vA., 1904, ii, 206 pages AVAILABLE IN ELECTRONIC (PDF) FORMAT ONLY

Saint Peter’s Parish in New Kent County, Virginia, was established on April 29, 1679. Its historic church, completed in 1703, is now St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in New Kent, VA 23124. It is one of Virginia’s oldest surviving parish churches and a National Historic Landmark.
The parish is particularly associated with Martha Dandridge Custis, later Martha Washington: the Rev. David Mossom of St. Peter’s officiated at her marriage to George Washington on January 6, 1759. The church’s parish register and vestry records are important sources for Virginia genealogy, including records from roughly 1680–1787.

When New Kent county was formed in 1654, it included what is now King William, King & Queen, and Hanover counties. The parish register includes birth, baptism, marriage and death records, for both blacks and whites, in their original entry order To view a digital copy of the index to this book, visit Index-Sppr
(Close the pdf file with the left arrow to return to Iberian's catalog) [ESPPR] $20.00 (electronic version only

KING WILLIAM COUNTY, VIRGINIA RECORDS, 1702-1806: Record Books 1-5 including surviving fragments by Beverly R. Conolly, 2006. 149 pages, index. On the morning of 17 January 1885 a devastating fire swept through the clerk's office in King William County, Virginia. When it was through, that county joined the ranks of "Virginia's Burned Counties" and a treasure of genealogical information was lost to researchers. The earliest five Record Books, which cover the period of the county's formation to the beginning of the nineteenth century, exist only in a fragmentary state, with huge gaps within the series. But they still provide a rich source of genealogical information. These were primarily deed books, filled with family references and relinquishments of dower, and an occasional odd marriage contract or prenuptial agreement. Occasionally, reference give information aside from the dry forms of protocol. Such was the case with William C. Pemberton, who signed over his property in 1805 in a deed of trust to Samuel and James Edwards because...

"being sensible of the great propensity which he has to gambling and being sensible also that by indulging this propensity he may involve himself, his wife and children in inextricable difficulties, if not total ruin, two tracts of land, one of 230 acres and the other of 275 acres together with household furniture, horses, stock, etc." (Record Book 3, pg. 310.)

The current compilation contains over seven thousand references to individuals in this burned county. It should become a valuable reference for researchers in eighteenth century Tidewater Virginia genealogy. Oftentimes, land purchases were made by individuals outside King William itself, and there are numerous references to relatives from Kentucky, North Carolina, and purchasers in the new nation's capital transferring title in this county. Anyone with early landowning colonial family in the region will welcome this study.
To view a digital copy (pdf) of the index to this book, visit Index-Kwrb
(Close the pdf file with the left arrow to return to Iberian's catalog) [KWRB] $27.00

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King William Co. 1815 Directory of Landowners by Roger G. Ward. 2005. 18 pages, map, 5 1/2X8 1/2.
For a full description of the 1815 LAND DIRECTORY Records and a listing of available counties, see combined volume below

[Vd56] $7.00

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[EVd56] $4.50 (electronic version)

1815 DIRECTORY OF VIRGINIA LANDOWNERS & GAZETTEER, vol. 3 Eastern Region (Includes the counties of Accomack, Caroline, Elizabeth City, Essex, Gloucester, Isle of Wight, James City, King and Queen, King George, King William, Lancaster, Mathews, Middlesex, Nansemond, Norfolk, Northampton, Northumberland, Princess Anne, Richmond, Surry, Warwick, Westmoreland, York, and the independent city of Norfolk. ) abstracted by Roger G. Ward. 1997, vi, 252 pages, indices, maps.
In 1782 the General Assembly of Virginia enacted new tax laws which created within each county an enumeration of land and certain personal property. These early land tax laws required a tax commissioner in each district of a county to record a list of the names of persons owning land or town lots, the quantity of land owned and its value, and the amount of tax owed. By 1813, a brief geographic description (usually citing an adjacent stream, road, or other landmark) was required; in 1814, the distance and direction from the courthouse for each parcel was also added to the tax rolls.
The present work is an alphabetical listing of all 1815 landowners found in each county, as well as the accompanying description of the location of the said property. We have not included the number of acres, taxes assessed, or any transactions between landowners which may have been noted on the tax rolls; also, in many cases the geographic location was provided as "adjacent to John Smith", etc. and, while useful many times to a genealogist, was considered to be beyond the objectives of this project. The reader is encouraged to consider the information here-in as an "outline" of early landowners in Virginia rather than a "text" due to the year-to-year variation in information provided to the clerk (or recorded by the clerk), omissions, lack of "identifiers" to determine if "same name" was also "same person" within a district or across districts, marginal quality/clarity (in a few cases) of the microfilm copy, and, not least, errors on the part of either the original clerks or the current author while transcribing.
Some of the approaches to utilizing the 1815 landowner information include:
observe distinct clusters of the same surname within a county in order to clarify the common surnames such as "Smith", "Anderson", etc;
identify non-resident landowners and their county (or state) of residence (these people often being former residents of the current county);
determine neighbors with different surnames (often being relatives);
use the 1815 information as a "bridge" from the 18th and 19th century deed/will books to the 17th and 18th century land grants/patents in the county;
evaluate the 1810 to 1840 census information which generally grouped neighbors;
substitute this information for missing deed/will books in the "burned" counties; and, clarify/enhance vague deed/will information in the counties with more complete records.
FORMAT OF PRESENTATION: Each entry is listed as: Surname, name, personal identifiers (if any); location/place-name of land; miles/direction from the 1815 courthouse. If multiple owners are listed for a property, the listing is duplicated under each of the owner's surnames (i.e "Smith and Brown" is also listed as "Brown, --see Smith"); when multiple owners share a common surname, the property is only listed once. When a landowner had land at more than one location/place-name, the miles/direction listing for each parcel is in the same sequence as the location listing (i.e. James RV, Slate CK; 12N, 5SW.). In the few cases where a landowner had "many" parcels, the miles/direction notation is attached to the location listing (i.e. Sandy RV- 5NE, Willow CK-7S, etc.)

[Vdl3] $32.00 (paper version)

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[EVDL-3] $20.00 (electronic version)

King William Co. Revolutionary Public Claims transcribed by Janice L. Abercrombie and Richard Slatten.. 2005. 58 pages, 5 1/2X8 1/2.
For a full description of the Virginia Revolutionary Public Claims and a listing of available counties, see: Revolutionary "Publick" Claims series

To view a digital copy (pdf) of the index to this book, visit Index-Kgwm
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[Pc38] $8.50 (printed version)

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[EPc38] $6.00 (electronic version)

SOME WILLS FROM THE BURNED COUNTIES OF VIRGINIA compiled by William Lindsay Hopkins. 6x9 format. Wills from circa 1670-1830 for the counties of Brunswick, Buckingham, Caroline, Charles City, Dinwiddie, Elizabeth City, Gloucester, Hanover, Henrico, James City, King George, King and Queen, King William, Mathews, Nansemond, New Kent, Prince George, Prince William, Stafford, and Warwick Counties, Va.

To view a digital copy of the index to this book, visit Index-Swbc
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[Swbc] $32.00 (printed version)

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[ESwbc] $20.00 (electronic version)

For other records pertaining to King William COUNTY, VIRGINIA see:

Men in Gray Interments series
Caroline County
Guide to Virginia Militia Units in the War of 1812
Chart on the Formation of Virginia Counties
Atlas of County Boundary Changes in Virginia, 1634-1895
Index to the 1810 Virginia Census

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Iberian Publishing Company's On-Line Catalog: King William County Virginia

Iberian Publishing Company's On-Line Catalog:
King William County Virginia