#17 Royal Descents, Notable Kin, and Printed Sources: The South, Part 2: Virginia Sources, The Carolinas and Georgia
Gary Boyd Roberts
Published Date : March 20, 1987
Today, almost a week since
our successful and enjoyable seminar in Houston, I return to my consideration of
geographical divisions and best sources for the American South. Having discussed
Maryland and the geographical divisions of Virginia in the last column, we now
turn to major printed works on the Dominion state.
The exceptionally rich
Virginia periodical literature--Virginia Magazine of History andBiography, The William and Mary College Quarterly, and Tyler’s
Quarterly--have been splendidly consolidated into 14 vols. of Genealogies
of Virginia Families, 6 vols. of printed primary data (Virginia Vital,
Marriage, Will, Land, Military, and Tax Records), and Virginia Gleanings
in England (all by GPC). The Virginia Genealogist (1957- present) has
a one-vol. index to vols. 1-20 (an index to vols. 21-40 is underway), and
Virginia genealogies have been well subject-indexed by Stewart (books to 1930)
and Stuart Brown, 3 vols. (books, 1930-75 and manuscripts); Swem’s well known
index, now largely superseded, covers all names in the first three above
journals through 1930.
Virginia research also benefits from a sizable
number of collective genealogies or partial genealogical dictionaries.
Adventurers of Purse and Person, 3rd ed. (1987) authoritatively covers
the early Jamestowners (those there by 1625 and three generations of their
descendants). Crozier’s Virginia Heraldica covers those
"cavalier" and later plantation families that were armigerous. Hayden’s
Virginia Genalogies covers many families of northern Virginia and its
spillover into Maryland. Hardy’s Colonial Families of the Southern States of
America covers many major plantation families but is generally mediocre. The
works of J.B. Boddie--Virginia Historical Genealogies,
Southside Virginia Families, 2 vols, and Southern Historical
Families, - 23 vols. cover many smaller planter families of the "southside"
below Richmond, but contain some errors. Also of note are E.P. Valentine’s
Papers, duBellet’s Some Prominent Virginia Families,
Foley’s James River Families, 2 vols., David Avant’s very fine
Colonial Southern Families, 4 vols., and two good new GPC volumes,
Tidewater Virginia Families and Maryland and Virginia
Colonials. The best multi-ancestor Virginia work is Clayton Torrence’s
Winston and Allied Families (commissioned by Mrs. C.S. Pillsbury,
sponsor of the Holmans in New England), and recent volumes of printed primary
data include Cavaliers and Pioneers, 5 vols. (abstracts of all land
grants), Lloyd Bockstruck’s Virginia Colonial Soldiers, and M.J. Clark’s
Loyalists in the Southern Campaign of the Revolutionary War, 3 vols. The
centennial edition of the DAR Patriot Index, 3 vols., lists more soldiers
from Virginia, I believe, than from any other colony.
North Carolina
divides into the Albemarle Tidewater, the Piedmont center, and the eastern
mountains. There is enormous 18th century Scots-Irish immigration and a large
spillover from Southside Virginia (the Piedmont and Raleigh) and from the
Shenendoah Valley (esp. after 1750, Pennsylvania Germans/Moravians to
Winston-Salem). The Southside Virginia spillover continues into upcountry South
Carolina and the Scots-Irish,Germans, and Welsh continue into eastern Tennessee
and Knoxville. There is also some New England Quaker immigration, from Cape Cod
and Nantucket, to Guilford, Jones, and Carteret counties; often these Quakers
move later to Ohio and/ or Indiana.
Major sources for North Carolina
include its Colonial Records, Journal of North Carolina Genealogy,
1955-74, and the North Carolina Genealogical Journal since 1975 (both
journals published or still print primarily source records). Useful guides
include Draughton’s and Johnson’s North Carolina Genealogical Reference,
1966 (with lists of all researchers then tracing any North Carolina family), and
Leary’s and Stirewalt’s North Carolina Research, 1980. Since the 1976
bicenntenial a large number of modern "mugbooks" have included the results,
usually undocumented, of much recent research. Brent Holcomb’s marriage volumes
cover many counties and the pre-Civil War marriages are available on microfilm
(at NEHGS and elsewhere). The famous North Carolina "core collection," a filmed
copy of all courthouse data for the entire state, is at the State Library in
Raleigh, at the Fort Wayne and Allen County Library in Indiana, and at the
Family History Library in Salt Lake City.
The major fact about South
Carolina genealogy is the sharp division between Low Country Charleston and
"upcountry" District 96, etc. Low Country Charleston is a third major planter
culture, after Maryland and Virginia; "upcountry" contains largely spillover
Southside Virginia planters and Scots-Irish pioneers from North Carolina. The
Charleston planter elite was colonially quite heterogeneous--English (Alston,
Bull, Fenwick, Gibbes, Middelton, Lowndes, all with English gentry connections
and frequent Caribbean ties, esp. to Barbados); Scots (Cuthbert, Kinloch);
Anglo-Irish (Pierce Butler); French Huguenot (Bellinger, Huger, Manigault,
Ravenal); and Iberian "grandee" Jewish. Within the planter elite there were many
intercolonial marriages and connections to Savannah, Philadelphia, Yale, and
Newport, R.I.; some major Revolutionary or seccessionist figures were Henry
Middelton, Thomas Lynch, Jr., Washington Allston, R.Y. Hayne, R.B. Rhett, and
Calhoun. After the Civil War the Charleston planter elite became insular and
regional, with few migratory or non-Social Register
descendants.
The genealogies from the South Carolina Historical (and
Genealogical) Magazine have been consolidated into Genealogies of South
Carolina Families, 5 vols. The other major journals are Transactions of
the Huguenot Society of South Carolina (unindexed), and South
Carolina Magazine of Ancestral Research (since 1973, with an index to
vols. 1-10, largely source records for "upcountry") . Four vols. of S.C. wills
by Caroline T. Moore cover 1670 to 1800, and Brent Holcomb’s South Carolina
Marriages, 2 vols., covers those to 1820. Brent has compiled many other
vols, of newspaper notices, etc., and the Biographical Directory of the South
Carolina House of Representatives, in several vols., authoritatively
covers all colonial and early 19th century legislators. Also note several
Caribbean sources--Genealogies of Barbados Families, Bermuda
Settlers, and Barbados wills and VR vols. by Sanders.
Early Georgia
residents include a small, largely Scottish Highland elite associated partly
with Savannah (Baillie, Bulloch, Irvine [ancestors of Theodore Roosevelt’s
mother], Houston, McIntosh, this last including a noted Native American leader
). A large post-Revolutionary and post-Indian Wars migration from Virginia and
the Carolinas contributed most ancestors of contemporary Georgians, who are
usually not descended from Oglethorpe’s followers or the Savannah Highlanders.
"New South" Atlanta has attracted many migrants from other areas but also a
large number of Georgians from county seats or small towns. Major sources
include Colonial Records of the State of Georgia, the several land
lotteries vols., works of Folks Huxford (Wiregrass Georgia, 6
vols., covering the southernmost coastal counties, the GeorgiaGenealogical Magazine, etc.), various vols. by Jeannette H. Austin (will
abstracts, intestate records, The Georgians, etc.), and Gnann’s
Georgia Salzburgers and Allied Families (on the state’s major German
immigrants).
I hope readers have enjoyed this survey of the Atlantic
coastal South. Next week we will look at Kentucky; Tennessee; the "cotton
kingdom" and delta and Creole cultures of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana;
the Mississippi River culture; and Texas.