ACCOMACK COUNTY, VIRGINIA
January, 1632/33 ... its Indian name meant 'across-the-water-place'. The Assembly changed its name to Northampton in March 1642/3. Accomack County was created in 1662 from the upper part of Northampton County and began to function as a county in
its own right in April 1663. Between 1670 and 1674 Accomack and Northampton were reunited politically. The boundaries have not changed since its formation. The eastern and western boundaries are the Atlantic Ocean and Chesapeake Bay, respectively;
its southern line adjoins Northampton and was defined in 1688.
The first European settlers arrived in 1671.
On the north it abuts the Maryland state line. Today the county comprises 502 square miles.
The image above is the landmark Atlantic Hotel on Chincoteague Island, Accomack County, Virgina.
The community is known for its annual roundup of wild horses. Each July, ponies are rounded up and swum across the channel to be sold.
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Accomack County 1815 Directory of Landowners Compiled By: Roger G. Ward Date Of Publication: 2005 Number Of Pages: 42 Dimensions: 5.5" x 8.5" Misc: Map Cost: $8.00 Stock Code: [VD01]
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In 1782 the General Assembly of Virginia enacted new tax laws which
created within each county an enumeration of land and certain personal property. These
early land tax laws required a tax commissioner in each district of a county to record a
list of the names of persons owning land or town lots, the quantity of land owned and its
value, and the amount of tax owed. By 1813, a brief geographic description (usually
citing an adjacent stream, road, or other landmark) was required; in 1814, the distance
and direction from the courthouse for each parcel was also added to the tax rolls. The present work is an alphabetical listing of all 1815 landowners found in each county, as well as the accompanying description of the location of the said property. We have not included the number of acres, taxes assessed, or any transactions between landowners which may have been noted on the tax rolls; also, in many cases the geographic location was provided as "adjacent to John Smith", etc. and, while useful many times to a genealogist, was considered to be beyond the objectives of this project. The reader is encouraged to consider the information here-in as an "outline" of early landowners in Virginia rather than a "text" due to the year-to-year variation in information provided to the clerk (or recorded by the clerk), omissions, lack of "identifiers" to determine if "same name" was also "same person" within a district or across districts, marginal quality/clarity (in a few cases) of the microfilm copy, and, not least, errors on the part of either the original clerks or the current author while transcribing. Some of the approaches to utilizing the 1815 landowner information include:
1. Observe distinct clusters of the same surname within a county in order to clarify
the common surnames such as "Smith", "Anderson", etc; FORMAT OF PRESENTATION: Each entry is listed as: Surname, name, personal identifiers (if any); location/place-name of land; miles/direction from the 1815 courthouse. If multiple owners are listed for a property, the listing is duplicated under each of the owner's surnames (i.e "Smith and Brown" is also listed as "Brown, --see Smith"); when multiple owners share a common surname, the property is only listed once. When a landowner had land at more than one location/place-name, the miles/direction listing for each parcel is in the same sequence as the location listing (i.e. James RV, Slate CK; 12N, 5SW.). In the few cases where a landowner had "many" parcels, the miles/direction notation is attached to the location listing (i.e. Sandy RV- 5NE, Willow CK-7S, etc.)
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Accomack County Revolutionary Public Claims Compiled By: Janice L. Abercrombie & Richard Slatten Date Of Publication: 2005 Number Of Pages: 6 Dimensions: 5.5" x 8.5" Cost: $5.00 Stock Code: [PC01]
Ordering Options As Continental forces and Virginia militia units were engaged in winning independence, American quartermasters and provisioners struggled to provide these units with all the necessities of life, from meals and guns to meat, fodder for horses, the horses themselves, firewood, and every other type of material. Much of this was requisitioned from the civilian population and certificates were issued payable in either continental or state funds, depending on the units supplied, upon presentation to court authorities. Thousands of these certificates issued to Virginians were duly entered by the courts, and they provide a fascinating insight into the period of the Revolution. These "Publick" Claims booklets contain interesting and useful information about the contributions of ordinary people to the Revolutionary War. They provide some details of people's service in the militia or as guards for prisoners of war; they indicate where some bodies of troops were at particular times; and they identify providers of horses, wagons, cattle, grain, or other supplies. Much of the information in these booklets cannot be found anywhere else, which makes the surviving records particularly valuable. Also remarkable is the fact that records survived from virtually every county in the state at that time with the exception of the newly formed Kentucky counties. This makes the collection even more valuable in covering areas which heretofore in this time period have suffered from a lack of personal data. The "Virginia Publick Claims" are published by counties. In addition to a faithful transcription by Janice Luck Abercrombie and the late Richard Slatten, a complete index is provided for each county booklet. This series is an extremely important genealogical tool for searchers in Revolutionary-era materials.
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