How to Find Your Vaughan Ancestor in Southside Virginia Prior to 1850

The scope of this section is Southside Virginia prior to 1850. Most, but not all, are members of the Cyan, Orange and Pink DNA Groups. If your Vaughan ancestor is from another area of Virginia it is doubtful, you will find these records useful.

Male

First, review this summary. Next, open the Explanation of Personal Property Tax Spreadsheet and review the explanation. Lastly, open the Personal Property Tax Spreadsheet. Locate your ancestor or possible ancestor. Then open the county screen for the county you found from the Personal Property Tax Spreadsheet. Open the Vaughan Roster Page and scroll down to your ancestor. There you will see a summary of records found. Then open the various pages on this site and review those records.

Female

Unfortunately, most females do not appear in the Personal Property Tax Digests. To find a female, open the various Vaughan Rosters that are located in each County Page of this site and look for your ancestor. Then open the various pages on this site and review those records.

If you want to dig deeper (and I hope you will), my sources generally are:

Various printed sources

You can use www.worldcat.org to try to find a copy of the book near you.

familysearch.com

https://www.familysearch.org. Records are best first located in the comfort of your own home. Most are best found using the Search - Catalog page on familysearch.com. Some can be used at home. To view most records, you will need to travel to a LDS Family History Center near you and review the record online. Bring a thumb drive and you can copy a scan of the record and copy it onto your computer.

binnsgenealogy tax club

http://www.binnsgenealogy.com/ has an extensive set of tax digests for the State of Virginia. The cost to use their site is free to nominal.

Original records from Library of Virginia (LVA)

Online Chancery cases http://www.lva.virginia.gov/siteIndex.asp Chancery

You can borrow microfilm of original county records through Interlibrary Loan (ILL) at your local library or university. The trick is to find a nearby library or university that offers ILL and has a microfilm reader, scanner, printer to make a copy of the record.

http://www.lva.virginia.gov/siteIndex.asp County and City Records on Microfilm

Good Luck and Happy Hunting.

David H. Robertson, 159 Hickory St., Roswell, GA 30075 davidhr@hushmail.com