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1815 DIRECTORY OF VIRGINIA LANDOWNERS & GAZETTEER, vol. Northwest Region
(Includes the counties of Berkeley, Brooke, Cabell, Hampshire, Hardy, Harrison, Jefferson, Kanawha, Mason, Monongalia, Ohio, Pendleton, Randolph, Tyler, and Wood ) abstracted by Roger G. Ward. 1997, vi, 232 pages, indices, maps.
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:-
observe distinct clusters of the same surname within a county in order to clarify
the common surnames such as "Smith", "Anderson", etc;
- identify non-resident landowners and their county (or state) of residence (these
people often being former residents of the current county);
- determine neighbors with different surnames (often being relatives);
- use the 1815 information as a "bridge" from the 18th and 19th century deed/will
books to the 17th and 18th century land grants/patents in the county;
- evaluate the 1810 to 1840 census information which generally grouped
neighbors;
- substitute this information for missing deed/will books in the "burned" counties;
and, clarify/enhance vague deed/will information in the counties with more complete
records.
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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Brooke County was named for Robert Brooke, governor of Virginia from 1794 to 1796. Settlement in this region of West Virginia began as early as 1744, but it was a half century later, in 1796, that Brooke County was formed from a portion of Ohio County. In 1848 the northern half of Brooke was cut off to form Hancock County.
BROOKE CO., VA 1810 CENSUS transcribed by John Vogt. 10 1/2 x 8 1/2, x, 25 pages, illustrations, maps, indec. This is the first surviving census for Brooke, since both the 1790 and 1800 censuses have been lost. Brooke was an important county on the western edge of the state and abutting the Ohio River. It was a major crossing point for settlers moving into eastern Ohio in the 1790s and early 1800s.