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.

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 records of several types from 1678 to 1739 are contained in one microfilm reel of 564 pages labeled as 2 volumes filmed at the North Carolina State Archives in 1941 available at Family Search. An abstract of these records was published by Weynette Parks Haun in 1982 entitled Old Albemarle County North Carolina Miscellaneous Records, 1678-1937.
 * An additional 28 miscellaneous 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 earliest 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). See also NC Archives Secretary of State Land Grants on-line database.

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 largely replaces earlier abstracts by Grimes and others.

Taxation

 * 1694 - Survey, Albemarle County, 1694 (index) in NC Taxpayers 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