Greensville County, Virginia Genealogy

United States &gt; Virginia &gt; Greensville County

Parent County
1780--Greensville County was created 16 October 1780 from Brunswick and Sussex Counties. County seat: Emporia

Neighboring Counties

 * Brunswick
 * Dinwiddie
 * Northampton County, North Carolina
 * Southampton
 * Sussex

Immigration

 * Ljungstedt, Milnor. "Items from Southern Records" [Showing Family and Trade Connections with Northern Colonies and the Home Countries], The American Genealogist, Vol. 15 (1938):95-104. Available at New England Ancestors. [Greensville Co., VA surname: Harris.]

Land
Grants and Patents


 * Hudgins. 694 patents dated 1715-1800 in what is now Greensville County, Virginia placed on a map. DeedMapper, 2000. [Names of those who received land patents, dates, land descriptions, and references may be viewed free of charge (click "Index" next to the county listing); however, in order to view the maps, it is necessary to purchase Direct Line Software's DeedMapper product.]

Migration

 * Clay, Robert Y. "Some Delinquent Taxpayers 1787-1790," The Virginia Genealogist, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Apr.-Jun. 1976):199-208. Available at FHL; digital version at New England Ancestors ($). [These records identify migrants who left the county and often their intended destinations. Greensville County's 1788 Delinquent List appears on pp. 127-128.]

Newspapers
Professor Tom Costa and The Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia have created a database of all runaway advertisements for slaves, indentured servants, transported convicts, and ship deserters listed in the Virginia Gazette and other Virginia newspapers (1736-1803), see: The Geography of Slavery in Virginia.

Research Guides

 * "A Guide to the Counties of Virginia: Greensville County," The Virginia Genealogist, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Jul.-Sep. 1968):107-108. Available at FHL; digital version at New England Ancestors($).

Taxation
At first glance, researchers might conclude that Virginia tax lists contain very little family history data, though one soon learns that valuable genealogical conclusions can be drawn from these records, nicknamed "annual censuses," such as: relationships, approximate years of birth, socio-economic status, identification of neighbors, the ability to distinguish between persons of the same name, evidence of land inheritance, years of migration, and years of death.

Virginia began enumerating residents' payments of personal property and land taxes in 1782. These two types of taxation were recorded in separate registers. Personal property tax lists include more names than land tax lists, because they caught more of the population. The Family History Library has an excellent microfilm collection of personal property tax lists from 1782 (or the year the county was organized) well into the late nineteenth century for most counties, but only scattered land tax lists. Microfilm collections at The Library of Virginia include land tax lists for all counties and independent cities for the years 1782 through 1978, as well as personal property tax lists for the years 1782 through 1930 (and every fifth year thereafter). Taxes were not collected in 1808.

Some tax records are available online or in print, though published abstracts often omit useful details found only in the original sources. Statewide indexes can help genealogists identify specific counties where surnames occurred in the past, providing starting points for research.


 * Schreiner-Yantis, Netti and Florene Speakman Love. The 1787 Census of Virginia: An Accounting of the Name of Every White Male Tithable Over 21 Years, the Number of White Males Between 16 &amp; 21 Years, the Number of Slaves over 16 &amp; Those Under 16 Years, Together with a Listing of Their Horses, Cattle &amp; Carriages, and Also the Names of All Persons to Whom Ordinary Licenses and Physician's Licenses Were Issued. 3 vols. Springfield, Va.: Genealogical Books in Print, 1987. Available at FHL. [The source of this publication is the 1787 personal property tax list. Greensville County is included in Vol. 1.]
 * Clay, Robert Y. "Some Delinquent Taxpayers 1787-1790," The Virginia Genealogist, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Apr.-Jun. 1976):199-208. Available at FHL; digital version at New England Ancestors ($). [These records identify migrants who left the county and often their intended destinations. Greensville County's 1788 Delinquent List appears on pp. 127-128.]
 * Indexed images of the 1789 and 1798 Personal Property Tax Lists of Greensville County, Virginia are available online, courtesy: Binns Genealogy.
 * Ward, Roger D. 1815 Directory of Virginia Landowners (and Gazetteer). 6 vols. Athens, Georgia: Iberian Pub. Co., 1997-2000. Available at FHL. [The source for this publication is the 1815 land tax. Greensville County is included in Vol. 2.]

Websites

 * USGenWeb project. May have maps, name indexes, history or other information for this county. Select the state, then the county.
 * Family History Library Catalog