Millions of Americans' genealogical roads lead to the Old Dominion — Virginia — and one might assume that everything about the pioneers of this original colony has been found and published. Not so! Genealogical material continues to be discovered and printed, the traditional way and on the Internet.
Browsing through an antique book shop in South Carolina, Kay Broach Suber (suber@juno.com) discovered a book published in 1907. It contained a series of historical sketches of Colonial Virginia churches, along with pictures of each.
There was no index to the book — a feature lacking in many old historical and genealogical volumes — but Suber recognized the importance of the material to anyone researching those elusive Colonial Virginia families.
Suber has reprinted Colonial Churches with an index by Linda Whitmer, and added a table of contents. Some of the sketches are strictly historical, while others are rich in genealogical details about ministers, vestrymen and members. For example, in the section on Abingdon Church, Gloucester County, Va., are listed (by surname only) the 570 resident families of this parish from 1677 to 1761. The names were taken from parish records of births, marriages, and deaths.
Thirty-one Virginia churches are featured, plus two in North Carolina — St. Thomas' in Bath, and St. Paul's in Edenton; along with the Holy Trinity (Old Swedes) Church in Wilmington, Del. Copies of the reprint may be obtained ($25 postpaid) from Broach-Suber Genealogical Association, 1609 185th Ave. N.E., Bellevue, WA 98008-3310.
Tidewater Virginia Families, a powerful contribution to Virginia genealogy by Virginia Lee Hutcheson Davis, was published eight years ago. Since then enough new material has turned up to warrant the publication of a supplement, Tidewater Virginia Families: Generations Beyond.
Eleven more families have been added to the original 40, with vignettes and anecdotes of family life, descriptions and locations of family homes and burial sites, extensions of sibling lines, identification of neighbors, county maps, a place-name index, and some corrections and updates to the original volume. All the families tie in with the earliest Hutcheson, Peatross, Butler, and Lee settlers in the colony of Virginia. The new families are: Alsbrook, Bibb, Edwards, Favor, Gray, Hux, Ironmonger, Laker, Southern, Taylor and Woolfolk.
Generations Beyond (8 1/2x11`, 221 pages, cloth), is available ($48.50 postpaid) from Genealogical Publishing Co., 1001 N. Calvert St., Baltimore, MD 21202-3897; (800) 296-6687.
The Virginia Journal & Alexandria Advertiser, a newspaper, first appeared in 1784 and has been continuously published ever since. While the name and owners have changed several times, it has always been located in Alexandria. This lovely port city was the trade and transportation center between Philadelphia and Charleston, for Caribbean and European commerce, and the so-called ``back country'' of Virginia.
In the early days the newspaper covered a wide area, with international as well as local news. The latter frequently relates to estate sales, merchants and goods, runaways, men refusing to pay debts of their wives, real estate for sale, ships, and their personnel.
Wesley E. Pippenger and James D. Munson have abstracted and indexed items of interest to genealogists and historians in a new book, The Virginia Journal and Alexandria Advertiser Volume I (February 5, 1784 to January 27, 1795). (8 1/2x11, 263 pages, softback; $35 postpaid). It is available from Family Line Publications, 65 East Main Street, Westminster, MD 21157; (800) 876-6103.
For genealogical links to Virginia on the Internet, use Cyndi's List at: http://www.cyndislist.com/va.htm
(c) 1998, Los Angeles Times Syndicate
Myra Vanderpool Gormley and Julie Case are co-editors of Missing Links, a free weekly genealogy e-zine. To subscribe, send your request to: Missing Links Newsletter
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