Nottoway County, Virginia Genealogy

United States &gt; Virginia &gt; Nottoway County



Parent County
1788--Nottoway County was created 22 December 1788 from Amelia County. County seat: Nottoway

Neighboring Counties

 * Amelia
 * Brunswick
 * Dinwiddie
 * Lunenburg
 * Prince Edward

Court
Chancery Court


 * Indexed images of Nottoway County, Virginia Chancery Records 1818-1968 are available online through Virginia Memory: Chancery Records Index. These records, often concerned with inheritance disputes, contain a wealth of genealogical information.

Historic Residences

 * Turner, W. R. Old Homes and Families in Nottoway. Blackstone, Va.: Nottoway Pub. Co., 1950, c1932. digital version at Ancestry ($).

Land
Grants and Patents


 * Hudgins and Sullivan. 901 patents dated 1717-1779 in what is now Amelia and Nottoway Counties, Virginia placed on a map. DeedMapper, 2003. [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.]

Local Histories

 * Cummins, A. B. Nottoway County, Virginia: Founding and Development with Biographical Sketches. Richmond, Va.: W.M. Brown &amp; Son, Printers, 1970. Available at FHL; digital version at Ancestry ($).

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.

Personal Papers

 * [Featherston] "Bible Record of William Featherston (Nottoway Co., Va. - Robertson Co., Tenn.)," Virginia Genealogical Society Quarterly Bulletin, Vol. 1, No. 3 (July 1963):20.

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.


 * Indexed images of the 1791 and 1801 Personal Property Tax Lists of Nottoway 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. Nottoway County is included in Vol. 1.]

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