Louisa County, Virginia Genealogy

United States &gt; Virginia &gt; Louisa County



Parent County
1742--Louisa County was created 6 May 1742 from Hanover County. County seat: Louisa

Neighboring Counties

 * Albemarle
 * Fluvanna
 * Goochland
 * Hanover
 * Orange
 * Spotsylvania

Family Histories
Bibliography


 * [Hendrick] Hendrix, GeLee Corley. "Benjamin Hendrick (1730-1818) of Virginia and Carolina and Some of His Descendants: Research in 'Burned' Southern Counties," The American Genealogist, Vol. 65, No. 1 (Jan. 1990):44-53. Available at FHL.

Land
Grants and Patents


 * Sullivan. 790 patents dated 1718-1838 in what is now Louisa County, Virginia placed on a map). DeedMapper, 2003. [Names of those who received land patents, dates, land descriptions, and references may be viewed free of charge (click "Index" next to the county listing); however, in order to view the maps, it is necessary to purchase Direct Line Software's DeedMapper product.]

Military
French and Indian War


 * Bockstruck, Lloyd DeWitt. Virginia's Colonial Soldiers. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1988. Available at FHL. [Identifies some Westmoreland County militia officers, soldier enlistments, and veterans; see place name index.]
 * Crozier, William Armstrong. Virginia Colonial Militia 1651-1776. Baltimore: Southern Book Co., 1954. Available at FHL; digital book at Ancestry ($). [Identifies some Accomack County militia officers and soldiers; see place name index.]

Newspapers
Indexed images of the Virginia Gazette(1736-1780) are available online through the Colonial Williamsburgwebsite. In addition, Professor Tom Costa and The Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia have created a database of all runaway advertisements for slaves, indentured servants, transported convicts, and ship deserters listed in this source and other Virginia newspapers (1736-1803), see: The Geography of Slavery in Virginia. These newspapers are valuable resources for all regions of Virginia.

Taxation
At first glance, researchers might conclude that Virginia tax lists contain very little family history data, though one soon learns that valuable genealogical conclusions can be drawn from these records, nicknamed "annual censuses," such as: relationships, approximate years of birth, socio-economic status, identification of neighbors, the ability to distinguish between persons of the same name, evidence of land inheritance, years of migration, and years of death.

Virginia began enumerating residents' payments of personal property and land taxes in 1782. These two types of taxation were recorded in separate registers. Personal property tax lists include more names than land tax lists, because they caught more of the population. The Family History Library has an excellent microfilm collection of personal property tax lists from 1782 (or the year the county was organized) well into the late nineteenth century for most counties, but only scattered land tax lists. Microfilm collections at The Library of Virginia include land tax lists for all counties and independent cities for the years 1782 through 1978, as well as personal property tax lists for the years 1782 through 1930 (and every fifth year thereafter). Taxes were not collected in 1808.

Some tax records are available online or in print, though published abstracts often omit useful details found only in the original sources. Statewide indexes can help genealogists identify specific counties where surnames occurred in the past, providing starting points for research.


 * Indexed images of the 1791 Personal Property Tax List of Louisa County, Virginia are available online, courtesy: Binns Genealogy.
 * Images of the 1798 Personal Property Tax List of Louisa County, Virginia are available online, courtesy: Binns Genealogy.
 * Schreiner-Yates, Netti. A Supplement to the 1810 Census of Virginia: Tax Lists of the Counties for which the Census is Missing. Springfield, Va.: Genealogical Books in Print, 1971. Available at FHL. [The source for this publication is the 1810 personal property tax lists. Louisa County is included because some or all of the 1810 Census for that county have been destroyed.]
 * Ward, Roger D. 1815 Directory of Virginia Landowners (and Gazetteer). 6 vols. Athens, Georgia: Iberian Pub. Co., 1997-2000. Available at FHL. [The source for this publication is the 1815 land tax. Louisa County is included in Vol. 1.]

Websites

 * USGenWeb project. May have maps, name indexes, history or other information for this county. Select the state, then the county.
 * Family History Library Catalog