The following article is by my friend Bill Dollarhide, taken from his book, Virginia Censuses & Substitute Name Lists, 1607-2014.
Prologue: Virginia has the distinction of being the home of the earliest permanent English settlement in North America, the Jamestown Colony. However, the early colonists did not do well, and for the first 30 years or so, Virginia was always on the brink of collapse and abandonment. It can be shown that one man turned Virginia into an American success story. That man was Sir William Berkeley, who was responsible for installing a cultural system based on his own experience in the Southwest of England. Berkeley encouraged the “second sons” like himself, to come to Virginia, set up tobacco-based plantations, and bring in thousands of indentured servants to work the plantations. After twenty years of Berkeley in charge, Virginia became a colony with an annual cash crop greater than any other English colony in the world.
1497-1498. Italian sea captain Giovanni Caboto was commissioned by the English King Henry VII to explore America. He landed in 1497 on the island of Newfoundland. On his second trip in 1498, he visited the coasts of present New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. In honor of the event, the king changed his name to John Cabot.
1558. Elizabeth I became Queen of England. The early exploration of North America took place during her 45-year reign, the Elizabethan Era, or “Golden Age.” When Elizabeth I was crowned, England was nearly bankrupt, but during her reign, the English Empire expanded and thrived, and English culture flourished in Literature, Theatre, Music, and Architecture.
1584. Sir Walter Raleigh claimed and named Virginia for the “Virgin Queen,” Elizabeth I, an area from present Chesapeake Bay to Florida, and everything “sea to sea” below a northwestern line to the North Pole.
1584-1590. Roanoke Colony. In 1584, Queen Elizabeth I granted to Sir Walter Raleigh a charter for the colonization of the entire area of North America. In 1585, the first group of settlers led by Sir Richard Grenville, established a colony at the north end of Roanoke Island (present Dare County, North Carolina). The first group left Roanoke Island after a few months, returning to England with Sir Francis Drake. When a second group brought by Grenville in 1586 found the colony abandoned, the bulk of the second group returned to England as well. The final group, led by Governor John White, arrived in 1587. Soon after, he returned to England to plead for more supplies. White had left 90 men, 17 women, and 11 children, including his grand-daughter, Virginia Dare, the first English birth in America. It took White over three years to return to Roanoke due to several incidents with pirates, the Anglo-Spanish War, and the Spanish Armada. When he did return to Roanoke Island in August 1590, there was no trace of the colonists. There was no sign of a struggle or battle at the site or surrounding areas. To this day, no one is completely sure what happened to “The Lost Colony.”
1603. James I became King of England, the first monarch to rule both England and Scotland. (He was James VI of Scotland since 1566). During his reign the first permanent English colonies were established in Virginia and New England. James I was an advocate for the transportation of thousands of clan people living along the Scottish-English border to Ulster Province / Northern Ireland.
1606. Two joint stock companies were founded in 1606, both with royal charters issued by King James I for the purpose of establishing colonies in North America. The Virginia Company of London was given a land grant between Latitude 34° (Cape Fear) and Latitude 41° (Long Island Sound). The Virginia Company of Plymouth was founded with a similar land grant between Latitude 38° (Potomac River) and Latitude 45° (St. John River), which included a shared area with the London Company between Latitude 38° and Latitude 41°.
1607. April 26. Virginia. Three ships under the command of Capt. Christopher Newport sought shelter in Chesapeake Bay. The forced landing led to the founding of Jamestown on the James River, the first permanent English settlement, consisting of 104 men and boys. The Jamestown colony was led by Capt. John Smith and his cousin, Bartholomew Gosnold. A year later, about 100 new settlers arrived, finding only 38 survivors from the first group. In 1610, recently appointed governor of Virginia, Thomas West (Lord De La Warr) arrived at Jamestown to find only 60 settlers alive.
1609. The 2nd Virginia Charter of 1609 extended the jurisdiction of the London Company to include former areas of the Plymouth Company. The language of the new charter now included the words, “sea to sea.” (James I was assured that the Pacific Ocean was just a bit west of the Appalachian Mountains).
1624. Virginia became a royal colony. Governors were now appointed by the Crown, and the colony agreed to make the Church of England the official church of state.
1625. Charles I became King of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Soon after taking office, Charles began to note a large number of non-conformists among his subjects. Along with his Archbishop, William Laud, the King began a campaign to purge his church of the largest group of non-conformists, the so-called “Puritans,” a militant Calvinist religious group attempting to purify the Church of England.
1629-1640. As a result of the Charles I campaign to purge non-conformists from the Church of England, large groups of people were disenfranchised. Charles I disbanded Parliament and ruled England alone for eleven years. The Puritans referred to this era as “the eleven years of tyranny.” It was during these eleven years that some 21,000 Puritan immigrants established the Massachusetts Bay Colony of North America.
1633. The Middle Plantation of the Virginia Colony was founded. The first major inland settlement after Jamestown, it later became Williamsburg.
1641. Virginia. Sir William Berkeley was appointed governor by Charles I. He served from 1642 to 1652 and again from 1660 to 1677. His brother Lord John Berkeley, was the first Proprietor of the East New Jersey colony, and both brothers were Lords Proprietors of the Province of Carolina. William Berkeley transformed the Virginia colony by emulating the culture of southwest England’s plantation system.
1642. English Civil War. When Parliament was restored in 1640, it quickly became dominated by the same Puritans who King Charles I had removed from the Church of England. Beginning in 1642, Royalist supporters were forced to fight the armies of the Puritan Parliament in the English Civil War. The English Colonies took sides: the Virginia colony favored the Royalist/Cavalier side, while the New England colonies were in support of the Parliamentarian/Puritan side. The Province of Maryland had earlier allowed all religious persuasions to settle in Maryland. During the English Civil War, Maryland granted free land as refuge to any Puritans from Virginia to settle there. The founding of Annapolis was by former Virginia people.
1645-1651. England. After his defeat and capture in 1645, Charles I refused to accept his captors’ demands for a constitutional monarchy, and briefly escaped captivity in 1647. While recaptured, his teenage son, Prince Charles, was able to marshal Scottish forces for the king. However, by 1648, Oliver Cromwell had consolidated the English opposition. King Charles I was tried, convicted, and beheaded for high treason in January 1649. The Civil War continued until 1651, when Oliver Cromwell, a Puritan, became Lord Protectorate, ruling the Commonwealth of England for the next seven years.
1650. The first settlements near Albemarle Sound were established by pioneers from tidewater Virginia.
1658-1660. England. After Oliver Cromwell died in 1658, his son, Richard, was too weak politically to remain in power. In 1660, a new Parliament offered a restored English throne to the exiled Scottish King, son of Charles I, who accepted to become King Charles II.
1699. Virginia. The colonial capital moved from Jamestown to the newly incorporated town of Williamsburg.
1707. England and Scotland merged into the United Kingdom of Great Britain. The English Colonies now became the British Colonies.
1717. The arrival of the first Scots-Irish immigrants to the British Colonies was via Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Alexandria, New Bern, and Charles Towne. The so-called Scots-Irish (or Ulster Scots) were former border clan people who had lived near the Scottish-English border for centuries. A good number of them had moved into areas of Northern Ireland in the early 1600s, and a mass migration to most of the British colonies of America began in about 1717. By 1775, the Scots-Irish outnumbered, by three times, all other British migration groups (Puritans, Cavaliers, Quakers). In western Virginia, the “Irish Road” got its name from the Scots-Irish immigrants, who themselves called it, “The Great Valley Road.”
1746. Pioneer’s Road. The first wagon road through the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia was constructed in 1746, allowing wagon traffic from Alexandria to Winchester, Virginia. The first travelers on the roadway were almost exclusively Scots-Irish immigrants, who had changed their travel plans to arrive in Alexandria instead of Philadelphia. The trace of the old Pioneer’s Road is now called US Hwy 50.
1754-1763. French and Indian War. In 1754, a 22-year-old Virginian, George Washington was given a commission as a Lt. Colonel. He led a Virginia Militia unit against the French-backed Indians.
1763. In the 1763 Treaty of Paris ending the French and Indian War (in Europe and Canada: the Seven Years War). France ceded virtually all of its North American claims east of the Mississippi to Britain. Soon after, King George III declared the “Proclamation Line of 1763,” as a way of rewarding the Indians who had helped Britain against the French. The proclamation established an Indian Reserve that stretched from the Appalachian Mountain Range to the Mississippi River.
1765. The Stamp Act was issued by King George III. It was the first direct tax levied against the American colonies without approval of their legislatures. In Boston, the Sons of Liberty was formed as a reactionary force. In Virginia, Patrick Henry began speaking out in protest.
1768. Treaty of Fort Stanwix. A new “Line of Property” was drawn, separating British Territory from Indian Territory. From Fort Stanwix (present Rome, NY), the division line ran to Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh) and down the Ohio River to the Tennessee River. The Fort Stanwix treaty line effectively ceded all of present West Virginia and Kentucky to the British Colony of Virginia.
1769-1772. The Colony of Virginia saw the Treaty of Fort Stanwix as an opportunity to open up settlement to its western lands. Beginning in 1769, land surveys were conducted in the Kanawha, Kentucky, and Cumberland River valleys In 1772, Fincastle County, Virginia was created, an area that included most of present West Virginia and all of present Kentucky.
1774. Lord Dunmore’s War. Due to the attacks against British colonists moving into the lands south of the Ohio River, the Governor of Virginia, John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, asked the Virginia House of Burgesses to declare a state of war with the hostile Indian nations. Dunmore said that Virginians needed to defend their legal right based on the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix. The war ended after Dunmore’s victory in the Battle of Point Pleasant (mouth of the Kanawha River on the Ohio River) in October 1774. In the resulting treaty, the Indians lost the right to hunt in the area south of the Ohio River. Thus, Dunmore’s War opened the way for an all-out effort to bring settlers into the western areas of Virginia.
1775. Virginian Patrick Henry gave a memorable speech in support of American independence, ending with “Give me liberty of give me death.”
1776. Virginian Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence.
1776. Virginia adopted a new State Constitution, and declared its independence from Great Britain.
1775-1783. The Transylvania Land Company. In 1775, the Cherokee Indians sold North Carolina Judge Richard Henderson huge quantities of land between the Ohio, Kentucky, and Cumberland rivers for the Transylvania Land Company. Under Henderson’s employ, Daniel Boone blazed and cleared the “Wilderness Trail” and established Fort Boonesborough. By 1783, some 60,000 settlers had used the Wilderness Trail to move into present Kentucky. Plans for the Transylvania Company’s proposed colony in present Tennessee were never fulfilled – the company was not recognized by either Virginia or North Carolina and was dissolved in 1783.
1780. Virginia. The capital of the Virginia Colony was moved from Williamsburg to Richmond. One of the reasons for the move was that the only wagon road to Williamsburg was virtually impassable during the Spring floods. As a result of the move, time stopped in 1780 in Colonial Williamsburg, which remains an authentic remnant of the colonial era of Virginia.
1781. At the Siege of Yorktown, British General Charles Cornwallis surrendered to the American forces led by General George Washington. The Americans had help from a French fleet that blocked the arrival of British reinforcements.
1783. The Treaty of Paris was the official end of the Revolutionary War, and the first recognition of the United States of America as an independent nation.
1788. Jun 25. Virginia adopted the U.S. Constitution to become the 10th state in the Union, with the state capital at Richmond.
About Virginia’s Censuses. The Commonwealth of Virginia has never taken a state census, so to find substitute lists of the names of inhabitants, one must turn to tax lists, land grants, deed indexes, and other name lists In 1908, the Census Bureau published the Heads of Families list of names for the lost 1790 Virginia census by using extant county tax lists from 1782-1785.
– 1790, 1800, 1810. Virginia’s earliest federal censuses do not provide much help to genealogists looking for ancestors there. The entire 1790 federal census was lost; and only two counties are extant for the 1800 federal census. For the 1810 census, about one fourth of its counties were lost.
– 1820 (and thereafter). The first statewide census complete for Virginia was the 1820 federal census. Thereafter, Virginia’s federal censuses through 1940 are complete for all counties and independent cities (except 1890, lost for all states).
Further Reading:
Virginia Censuses & Substitute Name Lists, 1607-2014 (Printed Book), softbound, 81 pages, Item FR0301.
Virginia Censuses & Substitute Name Lists, 1607-2014 (PDF eBook), 81 pages, Item FR0302.
Online Virginia Censuses & Substitutes: A Genealogists’ Insta-Guide TM (Laminated), 4-pages, 3-hold punched, Item FR0371.
Online Virginia Censuses & Substitutes: A Genealogists’ Insta-Guide TM (PDF eBook), 4-page, Item FR0372.