Van Buren County, Tennessee Genealogy

United States   Tennessee    Van Buren County Middle Tennessee county. Established 1840.





Quick Dates
Van Buren County's civil records start the following years:

County Courthouse
Van Buren County Courthouse Veterans' Square Spencer, TN 38585 Phone: 1-931-946-2121

Van Buren County Clerk Marriage and probate records Birth records 1925-1938 Death records 1926-1938 500 College Street, Administrative building Spencer, TN 38585 Phone: 1-931-946-2121

Van Buren County Register of Deeds Land records P.O. Box 9 Spencer, TN 38585 Phone: 1-931-946-7363

Van Buren County Circuit Court Clerk Court records P.O. Box 126 Spencer, TN 38585 Phone: 1-931-946-2153

Hours: Mon.-Fri. 8 a.m.-5 p.m.

History


The county is named after President Martin Van Buren (1782-1862).

Parent County
1840--Van Buren County was established 3 January 1840 from White, Warren, and Bledsoe Counties. Early records may be found under White, Warren, and Bledsoe Counties. County seat: Spencer

County Pronunciation


Did we get the accent right? If not, contact Nathan W. Murphy, [mailto:murphynw@familysearch.org murphynw@familysearch.org].

Boundary Changes
"Rotating Formation Tennessee County Boundary Maps" (1777-1985) may be viewed for free at the My Tennessee Genealogy website. They rely on AniMap 3.0 software.

Record Loss

 * Census loss: 1890
 * Marriage record loss: Records from 1840, but incomplete.
 * Probate record loss: Records from 1840, but incomplete.

Although these are not burned records, applying strategies used for burned counties may aid in compensating for their loss. For further information on researching in burned counties, see the following:


 * Arlene Eakle, When the Records are Gone in Tennessee Genealogy Blog
 * Burned Counties Research in FamilySearch Wiki
 * Michael John Neill, Burned Counties in Family History Circle

Research Guides

 * Genealogical "Fact Sheets" About Tennessee Counties: Van Buren County, courtesy: TSLA. (Identifies published county histories, published local records, census records, newspapers and local records on microfilm, and select manuscripts.)

African American
United States African Americans Tennessee African Americans

Biographies

 * Douthat, James L. Van Buren County, Tennessee Biographies. 1887; reprint, Signal Mountain, Tenn.: Mountain Press. Free Surname Index and purchase details at Mountain Press website.

Cemeteries
Tennessee cemetery records often identify birth, death, relationship, and military information, as well as religious affiliation.


 * Find A Grave can be searched by the name of a person or family to find where a person is buried. Usually gives birth and death dates often with a picture of the tombstone.  May give obituaries, names of family members and links to their information in Find A Grave.


 * Find A Grave also gives a list of cemeteries in Van Buren County linking to the information about the people buried there,


 * Van Buren Co. TN Cemetery Records, part of the TNGenWeb Cemetery Database, lists many cemeteries in the county, often with indexes and transcripts of the burials.


 * Van Buren County, Tennessee, USGenWeb Tombstone Transcription Project lists many cemeteries in the county and has transcripts of the tombstones arranged by cemetery.


 * The Family History Library Catalog lists some records of cemeteries in Van Buren county. Some of the books or others may be on Google Books or available at public libraries.


 * ePodunk list of Van Buren County cemeteries

Census
1840, 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1930 federal population schedules of Van Buren County are available online. For tips on accessing census records online, see Tennessee Census. If you're having trouble finding your ancestors in online indexes, try checking printed indexes. Created by local experts familiar with the area's families, these indexes are often transcribed more accurately than nationwide online indexes.

See Tennessee Population Schedule Indexes: Fiche, Film, or Book for more information about statewide printed indexes.

See Van Buren, TN census assignments, including links to transcribed files and scanned images of census microfilm. [The USGenWeb Census Project®].

1850


 * Rhinehart, Margaret. United States census Van Buren County, Tennessee, 1850. Spencer, Tennessee : Van Buren County Historical Society, 1982.

1860


 * Rhinehart, Margaret. United States census Van Buren County, Tennessee, 1860. Spencer, Tennessee : Van Buren County Historical Society, 1982.

1870


 * Rhinehart, Margaret. United States census Van Buren County, Tennessee, 1870. Spencer, Tennessee : Van Buren County Historical Society, 1982.

1880


 * Rhinehart, Margaret. United States census Van Buren County, Tennessee, 1880. Spencer, Tennessee : Van Buren County Historical Society, 1983.


 * Sistler, Byron H. and Barbara Sistler. 1880 Census Van Buren County, Tennessee. Nashville, Tennessee: B. Sistler and Associates, 1999.

1900


 * Rhinehart, Margaret. United States census Van Buren County, Tennessee, 1900. Spencer, Tennessee : Van Buren County Historical Society, 1983.

1910


 * Rhinehart, Margaret. United States census Van Buren County, Tennessee, 1910. Spencer, Tennessee : Van Buren County Historical Society, 1984.

1920


 * Young, Denise, ed.. Van Buren County, Tennessee Census, 1920 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2000. Available at Ancestry ($).

DNA
DNA has been collected from men claiming descent from the following Van Buren County residents. Attempts have not been made to verify the lineages of those tested.

Family Histories
It is anticipated that this bibliography will eventually identify all known family histories published about residents of this county. Use this list to:


 * Locate publications about direct ancestors
 * Find the most updated accounts of an ancestor's family
 * Identify publications, to quote Elizabeth Shown Mills, about an ancestor's "FAN Club" [Friends, Associates, and Neighbors]

General

As of August 2010, a query for persons born in Van Buren, Tennessee at World Connect, results in more than 19,000 entries.


 * Compendium of Local Biography Van Buren County, Tn. Signal Mountain, Tenn.: Mountain Press, [1997?]. FHL US/CAN Book 976.8657 D3c.

Bibliography

Law and Legislation

 * Tennessee State Library and Archives, Acts of Tennessee 1796-1850: Index to Names. January 25, 2005. [In addition to creating new laws, legislative acts were often required to obtain a divorce, grant legitimacy to a child, or for appointments to or grant payments for public service.] TSLA has created an index to names that appear in these acts covering the years 1796 to 1850. To read more about this valuable resource Click here. The searchable index is available at TSLA; another version is available at World Vital Records.

Military
Revolutionary War

The following Van Buren County Revolutionary War records are available online through TNGenWeb:


 * 1835 Pension Roll
 * 1852 Rejected or Suspended Pensions

Additional resources include:


 * Rejected or Suspended Applications for Revolutionary War Pensions. Washington, D.C., 1852. Reprinted by Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1969, and 1991. Reprints include "an Added Index to States." Digital version at Ancestry ($). Tennessee entries abstracted online at Tennesseans in the Revolutionary War, courtesy: TNGenWeb. [Includes veterans from this county; Tennessee section begins on page 381.]

War of 1812


 * Embry, Hermione D. "War of 1812 - Tennessee Pensioners on List - January 2, 1883," Ansearchin' News, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Jul. 1961):95-98. FHL US/CAN Book 976.8 B2a v. 8 (1961); digital version at journal website. [Includes Van Buren County pensioners (p. 98).]

Civil War


 * Head, Thomas A. Campaigns and Battles of the Sixteenth Regiment, Tennessee Volunteers, in the War Between the States, with Incidental Sketches of the Part Performed by Other Tennessee Troops in the Same War. 1861-1865. Nashville, Tennessee: Cumberland Presbyterian Publishing House, 1884. Free digital copy, courtesy: Internet Archive.

Native Americans

 * Walker, Opless and Landon D. Medley. Synthesis of Available Data Concerning Indians in Van Buren County, Tennessee. Doyle, Tenn.: Medley Research Group, 1985. FHL US/CAN Book 970.1 S78.

Newspapers
Many Tennessee newspapers are filmed and available at TSLA. Most of these newspapers may be accessed by interlibrary loan to libraries within Tennessee, although there are some newspapers which are not available in or outside of Tennessee. For further information regarding interlibrary loan policies and newspapers not available for interlibrary loan click here. For a list of newspapers available at the archives for Van Buren County click on the following town:


 * Spencer

Occupations

 * Miller, Alan N. Middle Tennessee's Forgotten Children: Apprentices from 1784 to 1902. Baltimore, Md.: Printed for Clearfield Company, Inc., by Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 2004. FHL US/CAN 976.8 U2ma. Purchase at Genealogical.com. [Includes Van Buren County.]
 * Tennesse Bureau of Agriculture, Statistics and Mines. Coal Mines and Mining--Tennessee. Nashville, Tennessee: A.B. Travel, 1883. Free digital copy.

Periodicals
Tap into the minds of local experts. Editors of genealogical periodicals publish unique sources that researchers who are new to their area would not likely discover. This type of material may be found in local, regional, or statewide genealogical society journals. The following periodicals cover this county:


 * Ansearchin' News


 * Genealogical articles with abstracts of Van Buren County, Tennessee records have been published in Ansearchin' News, the quarterly magazine of the Tennessee Genealogical Society. To view a list of these articles, visit their county index. To read digitized versions of the first 36 years of articles (Vols. 1-36), browse their archive or conduct a surname search. The Family History Library has a complete collection of the Ansearchin' News quarterly FHL US/CAN Book 976.8 B2a.


 * The Upper Cumberland Researcher


 * Genealogical articles with abstracts of records of Van Buren County, Tennessee have been published in The Upper Cumberland Researcher, the journal of the Upper Cumberland Genealogical Association, Inc. To view a list of the first 17 years of these articles, visit their online Seventeen Year Index to The Upper Cumberland Researcher (Vols. 1-17, 1975-1992). The Index contains a "Counties" section beginning on page 19. The Family History Library has most issues through the present FHL US/CAN Book 976.8 B2u (1975-1993) and FHL US/CAN Book 976.8 B2u (1994-present).


 * Van Buren County Journal


 * Family History Library US/CAN 976.8657 H2v Van Buren County Historical Society has past journals for sale. Website includes table of contents for each journal. Indexed in PERiodical Source Index (PERSI) Volumes 1 - 11 (1981 - 2000)

Prisons
Learn if your Van Buren County ancestors went to prison!


 * Inmates of the Tennessee State Penitentiary 1831-1850, free index available online, courtesy: TSLA.

Probate
Probate records are court records created after an individual’s death that relate to a court’s decisions regarding the distribution of the estate to the heirs or creditors and the care of any dependents. You may find the names of married daughters or other relatives and their residences; or information about the adoption or guardianship of minor children and dependents. Probate records do not always give an exact date of death, but the death usually occurred within a few months of probate. These documents are important to family history researchers because they usually exist for time periods before civil birth and death records were kept.

The Van Buren County Court has responsibility for the probate records.

The following Van Buren County probate records have been abstracted, indexed, or both:


 * [1840-1861] Sistler, Byron and Barbara Sistler. Index to Tennessee Wills &amp; Administrations 1779-1861. Nashville, Tenn. Byron Sistler &amp; Associates, Inc., 1990. FHL US/CAN 976.8 P22s. [Includes an index to this county's probate records.]
 * USGenWeb's Van Buren County page has some will abstracts.

Taxation
The following Van Buren County tax records have been abstracted:


 * [1812] Combs-Coombs &amp;c. "1812 Warren Co, Tennessee Tax Lists (A Start toward an Annotated List) Index and Search Engine," available online, courtesy: Combs-Coombs &amp;c. Research Group and Warren Co., TNGenWeb. [Benjamin Lockhart's District includes the area that later became Van Buren County.]
 * [1891] Tax List, 1891, Van Buren County Historical Journal, Vol. 6 (1986).

Marriage
The original Van Buren County marriage records are kept at the County Courthouse. Due to record loss, there are gaps in the marriage records of Van Buren County. Records are missing from May 1861-Aug 1866 and Sept 1878-Sept 1881.

The following Van Buren County marriage records are microfilmed:


 * [1841-1990] Available at the TSLA. With gaps: 1840-1915 can be interlibrary loaned.
 * [1840-1969] Available at the Family History Library. Each volume is indexed.

The following Van Buren County marriage records have been abstracted and/or indexed:


 * [1840-1861] Marriage Records, 1840-1861, Van Buren County, Tennessee. Nashville: TSLA, Historical Records Project, 1940.  Typescript.  Item 2
 * [1840-1870] Lucas, Silas Emmett and Ella Lee Sheffield. 35,000 Tennessee Marriage Records and Bonds 1783-1870. 3 vols. Easley, S.C.: Southern Historical Press, 1981. FHL US/CAN Book 976.8 V2t v. 1 ff. [Abstracts include names of brides, grooms, bondsmen, marriage bond dates, and officiators for weddings in this county for the roughly specified years. Marriage data taken from an index card file at TSLA. Authors do not specify whether or not the card index completely indexes this county's marriages.]
 * [1840-1875] Sistler, Byron and Barbara Sistler. Early Middle Tennessee Marriages. 2 vols. Nashville, Tenn.: B. Sistler &amp; Associates, 1988. FHL US/CAN Book 976.8 V2sb v. 2 ff. [Indexes names of brides and grooms, and marriage dates for weddings in this county for the specified years.]
 * [1840-1935] Rhinehart, Margret. Van Buren County marriage records : book I through book V, May 21, 1840 to September 2, 1935. Spencer, Tennessee: Van Buren County Historical Society, 1983.
 * RecordSearch at FamilySearch now includes indexed Tennessee marriages. This is a free pilot site and still under construction.  At this time, it is best to search from the home page, Discover Your Ancestors: indicate a surname, marriage "event", no date, and a county name (i.e. Dickson, Tennessee).  Browse through the results for that surname. You may need to supply any variant spellings of the surname in separate searches.
 * Many county marriage records are indexed with images at Ancestry's Tennessee State Marriages, 1780-2002. ($) Be aware that this index is not complete for many counties.
 * [1841-1860] Marriage Records.
 * [1840-1850] Marriage Records: Early–1850.

Divorce
In 1940 and 1941, W.P.A. workers pinpointed the location of Van Buren County divorce papers in diverse County Courthouse records that begin as early as 1840, see:


 * W.P.A. Guide to Public Vital Statistics in Tennessee. Nashville, Tenn.: The Tennessee Historical Records Survey, 1941. FHL US/CAN Book 976.8 A3gp.

Death
For deaths of Methodists in Van Buren County between the 1830s and the 1920s, try:


 * Smith, Jonathan K.T. Genealogical Abstracts from Reported Deaths, the Nashville Christian Advocate. [1847-1914] 10 vols. [Jackson, Tenn.]: J.K.T. Smith, 1997-2003. FHL US/CAN Books 976.855/N1 V48s 1847-1851 ff; digital versions at David Donahue Memorial: Tennessee Records Repository. [Website expands upon the publications and includes deaths from the 1830s, 1840s, 1910s and 1920s.]

Libraries

 * Burritt Memorial Library P.O. Box 18 427 College St. Spencer, TN 38585-0018 Phone: 1-931-946-2575 Fax: 1-931-946-2575 Van Buren County (Caney Fork Region) Hours: Mon. 8 a.m.-4 p.m., Tues. 12 p.m.-6 p.m., Wed. 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Thurs. 12 p.m.-6 p.m., Fri. 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Sat.-Sun. Closed The Burritt Memorial Library is on Facebook

Societies
Van Buren County Historical Society  330 Baker Mountain Rd Spencer, TN 38585 Publication: Semi-annual: Newsletter; Annual Van Buren County Journal; begun 1981. Table of contents online thru 1992

Middle Tennessee Genealogical Society PO Box 330948 Nashville, TN, USA 37203-7507 The society serves the 40 counties of middle Tennessee of which Van Buren County is one. It publishes The Middle Tennessee Journal of Genealogy and History, a quarterly containing articles of genealogical and historical interest. Little-known Tennessee records are published and indexed, along with family genealogies, Bible records and material submitted by members. There is an alphabetical Index to articles in the Journal 1988-summer 2005

Web Sites

 * Family History Library Catalog (FamilySearch)
 * Mailing List: TN-UPPER-CUMBERLAND-L (Upper Cumberland Tennessee Region Genealogy List) (RootsWeb)
 * Van Buren County, TN Family History and Genealogy Message Board (Ancestry)
 * Van Buren County, TN Genealogy and Family History (Linkpendium)
 * Van Buren County, TN Genealogy Forum (GenForum)
 * Van Buren County, TNGenWeb (USGenWeb)
 * Van Buren County, TN History, Records, Facts and Genealogy (MyTennesseeGenealogy)