Our meeting this Saturday will be a presentation by Carol Rush, Let’s Talk About Deeds. Carol will also introduce Nancy Upshaw who will help us understand Deedmapper, a software for working with land records.
A Zoom invitation will be emailed to all members on Thursday. The meeting is scheduled for 10 am on September 12.
We have all heard about RootsTech. It has been the largest genealogical conference to be held in past years. In 2021 RootsTech will be held virtually and is being advertised as “Free”. So check it out at https://www.rootstech.org/?lang=eng and see what you think. The dates are February 25-27, 2021.
The VGS Fall Conference will be held virtually this year. Check out the speaker and conference schedule at https://vgs.org/.
At our last meeting (via Zoom) we viewed a PowerPoint presentation from Linda Gore that gave some websites on the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Here’s a link to a downloadable file for your viewing pleasure!
Our meeting on August 8 will be about the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment.
Do you have any ancestors who marched for suffrage in the 1900s? How did you find out about them? Any stories or photos that you might like to share.
An invitation to the meeting will be emailed to members on Friday.
If you enjoy transcription, here’s a great project for you —
June 24, 2020:
For those who enjoy the art and intricacy of transcribing historical documents, the Library of Virginia is pleased to announce that a selection of Albemarle County Judgments, 1780-1852, are available for transcription on Making History: Transcribe. The judgments specifically involve African Americans and were identified and scanned to be added to Virginia Untold: The African American Narrative. Like chancery cases, judgments are useful primary sources for understanding social, legal, and economic history of a locality, and often for genealogical purposes as well. This is a small selection of judgments involving African Americans, identified through an index of early Albemarle judgments by Library of Virginia Senior Local Records Consulting Archivist Eddie Woodward.
Judgments are civil suits that typically involve debt or monetary damages, and were heard by a jury on the law side of the court. Documents such as assumpsits or declarations explain the reason for the plaintiff’s charge, and depositions often give the reader a glimpse into events from the perspective of witnesses in their own words. Additionally, judgments can include a variety of documents that were used as exhibits by the plaintiff or defendant, including wills, contracts, deeds, coroner’s inquests, correspondence, accounts, and receipts.
The rest of the article may be found on the blog, The UncommonWealth:
Early Albemarle County Judgments to be Transcribed and Placed on Virginia Untold
Please see information about online meetings by clicking on 2020 Meeting Schedule.
The Library of Virginia is pleased to announce that its reading rooms will reopen to researchers by advance appointment beginning at 10:00 AM on Tuesday, July 7, 2020. During the initial reopening phase, researchers will be able to use the collections by appointment Tuesday–Friday, 10:00 AM–4:00 PM. To make an appointment, please call 804.692.3800.
This issue contains 4 articles with generally useful information, including the first part of a list of African-American Men paying taxes in the 1867 Fluvanna County personal property tax list.
After the Civil War, all men over 21 years of age had to pay a personal property tax. The minimum personal property tax was $1 per year, unless you had an exemption, such as age. The tax assessors must have run into problems in 1866 trying to locate African-American men who hadn’t paid their taxes that year because most of them didn’t own land. There were also men with identical names, so there was a problem knowing which man of that name had paid his taxes.
Starting in 1867, Albemarle. Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa, and Nelson Counties began to record where these African-American men could be found. Other counties besides these five likely recorded locations also, but so far these are the ones I personally know of. …
For the rest of this article, and several others, CVGA members should go to “Members Only” on the menu bar above, and choose “Central Virginia Heritage — Current Issue.” (Note: You have to be logged in to this website in order to see “Members Only.”)
If you have trouble logging in to the site to download your copy, please contact me at the webmaster link at the bottom of this page.
For those who are not members of CVGA, we offer the opportunity to purchase a printed copy of each issue. The Summer 2020 issue is available from Amazon.com at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08C9CPS95 for $6.50. Click on the Amazon.com link above or search for “Central Virginia Heritage” on Amazon.com.
Contents of the Summer 2020 issue:
If you have any articles you’d like to share with CVGA members, please send an email to the editor, eleanordew at gmail dot com. — The Editor.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on Timberwood Blvd. will be closed for the foreseeable future. CVGA will be offering virtual meetings for the rest of the year.