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| MARS (North Carolina State Archives catalog) entry listing account books, ledgers and other paperwork which could list your Guilford Co NC ancestors) |
Another in
the series on sessions I attended at the NGS 2014 Family History Conference.
F313 Your Ancestor’s Famous Neighbors: Records of the Prominent as
Sources for Information of Others, Eric G Grundset, Syllabus page 345
As with
other sessions, this talk focused exclusively on VA records and you can still
use the information provided to pursue similar records for the locale that
interests you. This is especially true
if you are researching a family that kept a very low profile and/or they lived
in what we consider a “burnt county!”
Unrelated
to his talk, I learned how to pronounce
Henrico – let’s just say that I’ve never done it correctly in my head
!
The gist of
the talk was that many of those in our family may have interacted with their
famous neighbors and be documented in the extant records of such families. This will be particularly true if they all
lived in a small community. After all,
there were only so many people in the area at the time and certain tasks needed
to be accomplished. Surviving journals,
ledgers, papers, diaries, letters, and other extant documents of the so-called
famous just might mention the individuals you seek. Realize also that famous is relative. You don’t have to be looking at the
nationally famous or even those famous in the state, it might be individuals
and families who were only renowned in their county.
As always,
besides exploring this research tactic, I learned of a resource that I was
completely unaware of – Virginia
Heritage. Though I spend a lot of
time on the Library of
Virginia website, I had never visited the Virginia Heritage one. I will definitely do so for any future VA
research. I searched on Sussex
... The
journal of Richard Blow (1746-1833), dated 1783-1785, is for his branch stores
in Portsmouth and Sussex
County and lists charges for tobacco,
as well as for groceries, hardware, dry goods, clothing and liquor for persons
from Greensville, Southampton, and Sussex
Counties , Virginia
I recently
benefitted from doing just what Eric suggests when researching a family who
lived in Burke County NC Duke University
Correspondence and other papers of
Austin and Reid, justices of the peace and farmers, consisting of legal papers,
court records, tax lists, militia rosters, election lists and returns. There
are personal letters from relatives in Georgia ,
Kentucky , and Indiana Indiana ,
and Burke County
625 items.
Besides the
tax lists and militia rosters (very interesting and not found elsewhere), what
is NOT mentioned in this description is that these records also included a
journal/ledger for a distillery. Talk about a manuscript which listed almost
everyone in the community and it was not unusual for families to be listed on
the same page and like-named individuals to be uniquely identified (e.g. John (son
of Paul)). Read more about this neat
collection in Alcohol -- Legal and Illegal has a long history in the U.S. --
Did your ancestor's imbibe? As a
result of this, I am definitely sold on looking for the records of those “more
famous” in a community to see if the common folks I am seeking are mentioned in
their records.
The
associated syllabus pages provide a very detailed bibliography for VA sources
for published material about “famous neighbors” where you might find your
ancestors listed.
Editor’s Note: This session was NOT recorded. Hopefully a
friend attended the conference and you can learn more!
Editor’s Note: This series is not
presented in any particular order.
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