Albemarle County, North Carolina Genealogy

In 1664 Albemarle County was created as one of the original three counties of the North Carolina charter. Albemarle was the only one of the three to flourish. Albemarle was the area northeast of the Chowan River to the Virginia border. Although growth was slow, settlers trickled in from Virginia.

The four precincts of Shaftesbury/Chowan, Currituck, Pasquotank, and Berkeley/Perquimans had been carved out of Albemarle by October 1668. By 1669 the original Albemarle County had ceased to exist. And in 1738 the Assembly abolished the county and converted its precincts into counties of their own.

Also, for a brief period from about 1680 to the mid-1680s the Pasquotank Precinct was changed to Albemarle Precinct (not to be confused with the much larger Albemarle County), but the precinct residents preferred Pasquotank, so it was changed back.

Records of the extinct Albemarle County can be found in repositories of Chowan, Currituck, Pasquotank, and Perquimans counties, or at the North Carolina State Archives.

Miscellaneous Records

 * Remaining miscellaneous Albemarle records of several types from 1678 to 1739 are contained in 1 microfilm reel of 564 pages filmed at the North Carolina State Archives in 1941 and available at Family Search. An indexed transcript of these records was published by Weynette Parks Haun in 1982 entitled Old Albemarle County North Carolina Miscellaneous Records, 1678- ca 1737. Haun apparently worked from the originals, and her coverage is almost, but not totally, identical with the FS film (reel #18123). Both the film and the transcript are based on 3 hard-copy volumes of records at the Archives. The microfilm erroneously labels vol.3 as vol.2 again (frames 264 & 405).
 * An additional 28 miscellaneous Albemarle documents 1664-1675 at the Archives are also found on-line at Family Search, although they appear to contain information more useful to historians than genealogists.
 * The North Carolina Historical and Genealogical Register by James Hathaway was published in 1900-1901 (11 issues) and was an effort to abstract some of the earliest records of the Carolina Proprietorship. Many of those records dealt with the first settlements in the Albemarle Sound region of northeast North Carolina, and some of the original documents are said to have disappeared in the ensuing 120-odd years since Hathaway abstracted them. He did not index the quarterly volumes, but at least two books later appeared with full indexes. Meantime with the expiration of the copyright, Ancestry digitized the volumes and machine-indexed the OCR’ed images, which are posted on its web site as of 2020 ($), enabling full access.

Court

 * Higher Court Records 1670-1696 at North Carolina Pioneers ($)

Land and Property

 * Old Albemarle County, North Carolina, book of land warrants and surveys, 1681-1706 by Weynette Parks Haun (1984). This book is a transcription of headrights, warrants, surveys and land grants contained in a manuscript volume in the North Carolina State Archives (shelf mark Secretary of State 978.1). According to a foreword by the Reference Unit Supervisor at the Archives when this book was published in 1984, at least some of the survey warrants it contains are not contained in Margaret Hofmann’s Province of North Carolina 1663-1729 Abstracts of Land Patents (Weldon, NC: Roanoke News Co., 1979), and therefore by implication, not contained in Patent Book I of the North Carolina Land Grant office, which essentially duplicates the grants in this transcription by Mrs. Haun. Despite its title, this book contains material mostly from 1680 and 1693-1694, along with a smattering of material from other years.
 * A private on-line database with images (free) of North Carolina Land Grants from 1663 to 1960 based on official state archives is available here.

Probate Records

 * The earliest North Carolina wills were filed at the state level in Raleigh until 1760. They are available in the Transcription of provincial North Carolina wills, 1663-1729/30, vols.1 (2nd ed. 2014) & 2 (2nd ed. 2008) by John Anderson Brayton, Memphis, TN, 2003-2005. Brayton's transcription is more authoritative and inclusive than earlier abstracts by Grimes and others.

Taxation

 * 1679 quit rents & a 1694 survey are in North Carolina Taxpayers 1679-1790 vol. 2 (1987) by Clarence E. Ratcliff at Ancestry ($). Note that the Ancestry catalog listings for the 2 volumes are reversed and pp.12-13 are missing from vol. 2.

Websites

 * Historical Albemarle County, NCGenWeb

Vital Records

 * Old Albemarle County, NC, Perquimans Precinct, Birth, Marriages, Deaths & Flesh Marks,1659-1820 by Weynette Parks Haun