Norfolk City Virginia History and Genealogy

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Iberian Publishing Company's On-Line Catalog:
Independent City of Norfolk

Seventeenth-century records first mention Norfolk as a community in 1680 established by an Act of Assembly. The town's name apparently derives from the former English county home of the same name of Adam Thoroughgood, an early settler on the site. Norfolk incorporated as a borough (town) in 1736 and as a city in 1845. In 1906 Norfolk City annexed the adjacent town of Berkeley and reached its present size. The city of Norfolk's court records begin with court records in 1761, probate and land records in 1784, and marriage records in 1803. The only records earlier than that are the minutes of the common Council, dating from 1736 when the community was elevated to the status of a borough.

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BOROUGH OF NORFOLK, VA 1810 CENSUS transcribed, with an index by John Vogt. 2010, 10 1/2 x 8 1/2, x, 31 pages, illustrations, maps, This is the first surviving census for the borough of Norfolk, since both the 1790 and 1800 censuses have been lost. The faithful transcription is left in its rough alphabetic order. Beginning in the early 1600s as a "Half-Moone Fort," The Borough of Norfolk grew through the colonial period to become the second largest metropolitan area in Virginia, second only to Richmond. Although it suffered severe destruction during the Revolution and a disastrous fire in 1804, by 1810 and the time of this census, Norfolk Borough ranked twelfth among the cities in America. It contained a large foreign population (a good number of whome were French from the surnames in the census) and a large number of private companies dealing in tradegoods and shipping between Virginia and the rest of the world.
[NRBO10] $11.00 (printed version)

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[ENRBO10] $8.00 (electronic version)

Norfolk City 1815 Directory of Landowners by Roger G. Ward. 2005. 30 pages, map, 5 1/2X8 1/2.
For a full description of the 1815 LAND DIRECTORY Records and a listing of available counties, see combined volume below

[Vd45] $8.00

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[EVd45] $4.50 (electronic version)

1815 DIRECTORY OF VIRGINIA LANDOWNERS & GAZETTEER, vol. 3 Eastern Region (Includes the counties of Accomack, Caroline, Elizabeth City, Essex, Gloucester, Isle of Wight, James City, King and Queen, King George, King William, Lancaster, Mathews, Middlesex, Nansemond, Norfolk, Northampton, Northumberland, Princess Anne, Richmond, Surry, Warwick, Westmoreland, York, and the independent city of Norfolk. ) abstracted by Roger G. Ward. 1997, vi, 252 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.)

[Vdl3] $32.00 (paper version)

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[EVDL-3] $20.00 (electronic version)

For records pertaining to BOROUGH OF NORFOLK, VIRGINIA see:
Guide to Virginia Militia Units in the War of 1812
Chart on the Formation of Virginia Counties
Atlas of County Boundary Changes in Virginia, 1634-1895
Index to the 1810 Virginia Census

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Iberian Publishing Company's On-Line Catalog: Independent City of Norfolk

Iberian Publishing Company's On-Line Catalog:
Independent City of Norfolk