Wythe County, Virginia Genealogy

United States &gt; Virginia &gt; Wythe County

Parent County
1789--Wythe County was created 1 December 1789 from Montgomery County. County seat: Wytheville

Neighboring Counties

 * Bland
 * Carroll
 * Grayson
 * Pulaski
 * Smyth

Census
1840


 * Douthat, James L. 1840 Mountain Empire of Virginia Census. Signal Mountain, Tennessee: Mountain Press, 2001. Available at FHL. [Includes this county.]

1890 Union Veterans


 * Turner, Ronald Ray. Virginia's Union Veterans: Eleventh Census of the United States 1890. Available online, courtesy: Prince William County Virginia website. [Includes residents of this county.]

Family Histories
Bibliography


 * [Scott] Thomas, LaVerne and Kay Lee Wrage Gunn. The Scotts of Southwest Virginia: Descendants of the James &amp; Rachel Scott of Wythe/Smyth County and Ten Other Early Lines. 3 vols. Marion, Virginia: Dean Tucker Printing, c1999. Available at FHL; digital versions of Vol. 1, Vol. 2, and Vol. 3, courtesy: BYU Family History Archives.

Land
Grants and Patents


 * Hudgins. 976 patents dated 1750-1883 in what is now Wythe County, Virginia placed on a map. DeedMapper. 2009. [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.]

Military
Revolutionary War


 * Kegley, Mary B. Revolutionary War Pension Applications of Southwest Virginia Soldiers. n.p.: M.B. Kegley, 1997. Available at FHL. [Includes Smyth County pensioners.]

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: Wythe County," The Virginia Genealogist, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Jan.-Mar. 1981):49-51. Available 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.


 * Kegley, Mary B. New River Tithables, 1770-1773. Wytheville, Virginia: M.B. Kegley, 1972. Available at FHL.
 * Images of the 1793 Personal Property Tax List of Wythe County, Virginia are available to browse online, courtesy: Binns Genealogy.
 * Indexed images of the 1800 Personal Property Tax List of Wythe 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. Wythe County is included in Vol. 5.]

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