Books by Wesley E Pippenger

An Act passed by the State of Virginia in 1853 required that a register of marriages, a register of births and a register of deaths be kept by court clerks. It also required that a copy of these records be provided to two locations: the Auditor of Public Accounts in Richmond, Virginia, and the local clerk of the court. Unfortunately, the two records often differ. This compilation is based primarily on the copy that was filed with the Auditor of Public Accounts. It represents 3,927 death records for whites, non-whites and slaves, for the period 1856-1896. There are no records in this series for 1853-1855 and 1863-1869. The records in this volume include: 1,327 white; 2,096 colored; 467 slave; 29 unidentified; 13 free black; and 1 mulatto. Entries include the full name of the deceased, race: White or Colored (free or slave), name of slave owner, gender, date of death, place of death, name of disease or cause of death, age, names of parents, where born, occupation, consort of or unmarried, name of person giving the information of death, and designation of informant. Earlier entries for Colored may also list whether free or slave and name of slave owner. The front matter includes: Abbreviations, Act Requiring Vital Statistics, Common Diseases and Causes of Death, and two Register of Death examples (1861 and 1896). A place name index adds to the value of this work.

The purpose of this work is not to reproduce the record but to extract the content so that researchers may determine if the actual recorded copy needs to be consulted elsewhere. Entries here give the page numbers from the original record, date of the instrument and recording, signatories (both parties and witnesses), type of record, and a brief abstract to show the purpose of the original writing. Few deeds give actual metes and bounds, but rather give adjacencies as landmarks or reference to the properties of other owners. Many deeds give acreage as an estimate in round numbers, like "100 acres more or less." Spelling of known parties varies significantly, even within the same record. Commissions where a wife was examined to relinquish her rights are not always filed with the record to which they pertain. Individual items such as animals, kitchen or household furniture, or other personal items are indexed as personal property. Of particular interest in the deed books for this period are the multiple polls or election lists. These may be useful to researchers as a type of early enumeration or census of eligible voting white males for a particular district within Essex County. This collection is filled with references to apprentices, bonds for public position, guardians, emancipation of slaves, military service references, powers of attorney, and deeds, gifts, mortgages, agreements, and polls. An index to full-names, places and subjects adds to the value of this work.

This detailed family history is the result of the author's search for information about the ancestors of his mother, Zora "Eileene" Davison Pippenger, through her mother, Velma Pearl Allen (1902-1990), and her father, Chester Leland Davison (1901-1991). The included pedigree chart traces Zora's ancestors back to James Davison (c.1773-c.1852) and Catherine (perhaps Long), Ausburn Ridgeway (c.1770-1841) and Jane Phelps, Thomas Allen (c.1800-c.1893) and Lucy (perhaps Bell), Samuel Robinson Hicks (1820-1867) and Grizell Ann Brison (1825-1865), Joab Lewis (1833-1886) and Martha Ann Kelley (c.1834-d. before 1866), and, Watson M. Adair (c.1824-d. before 1858) and Mary Elizabeth "Polly" Sweazea (c.1828-1868). The author has provided a wealth of genealogical information as well as varying amounts of biographical information. Chapters are devoted to the following families: Allen, Hicks, Lewis, Adair, Sweazea, Bigger, Davison, and Ridgeway. Numerous photographs, facsimile reprints of original documents, a bibliography, and an index to full-names, places and subjects add to the value of this work.

The purpose of this work is not to reproduce the record but to extract the content so that researchers may determine if the actual recorded copy needs to be consulted elsewhere. Entries here give the page numbers from the original record, date of the instrument and recording, signatories (both parties and witnesses), type of record, and a brief abstract to show the purpose of the original writing.Few deeds give actual metes and bounds, but rather give adjacencies as landmarks or reference to the properties of other owners. Many deeds give acreage as an estimate in round numbers, like "100 acres more or less." Spelling of known parties varies significantly, even within the same record. Commissions where a wife was examined to relinquish her rights are not always filed with the record to which they pertain. Individual items such as animals, kitchen or household furniture, or other personal items are indexed as personal property.Of particular interest in the deed books for this period are the multiple lists of taxes collected and election or poll lists. These may be useful to researchers as a type of early enumeration or census for a particular district within Essex County. This collection is filled with references to apprentices, bonds for public position, guardians, emancipation of slaves, powers of attorney, and deeds, gifts, mortgages, agreements, and polls. An index to full-names, places and subjects adds to the value of this work.

This work is a compilation of data found in 1,478 marriage bonds or consents of Essex County, Virginia, for the years 1804 through 1850. These are the earliest marriage records that survive for the county ¿ those before were either burned or inadvertently destroyed. These original records are not generally served to researchers, rather researchers are directed to a bound Register of Marriages (Book One) that lists the bonds. Each entry references the page in this Register on which the information may be found. The most bonds were issued in 1835 (forty-seven) and 1827 (forty), with the other years averaging about thirty each. The fewest bonds are found for 1826 (seventeen).Individual entries in this work were derived primarily from marriage bonds and consents (by guardian or parent), and have been supplemented with data taken from outside sources such as: family Bible records, cemetery records, military records, and other publications. Not all entries contain information from outside sources. The format is two-fold: the first part of the paragraph is used for sequencing of the groom, and includes what data the compiler has found outside of the marriage record itself. Followed by this is the consolidated public marriage record (with the names of the bride and groom in capital letters), including the date of the marriage bond, and citing the main sources for the information used. The text is supplemented with nearly 900 footnotes by the compiler, an every-name index that contains over 9,000 entries, and a bibliography.

For this study, a "lost record" is considered in two ways: first, as an item from a location where court records have been destroyed; and second, for records that are found in unexpected places - oftentimes far from their point of origin. One might consider this work about wills and their whereabouts. Also abstracts or transcripts of wills have been noted when found published in periodicals.Numerous sources have been consulted, and these are listed under Abbreviations. Many wills may be found digitized and accessed online at the Library of Virginia. Wills that are identified from chancery suits are typically not included if they originate from the same county as the court copy of a will. Of the wills that have been copied from chancery causes, a single suit reference is normally given; however, the will may be found in multiple suits. Many previous to 1800 are included. In using the burned record county database at the Library of Virginia, not all items show the specific source for the copy, so the reference given here is merely "BRCD." Duplicate entries have been removed from the subject work, which focuses on data previous to 1800.

During the 19th century, Georgetown played an important role in commercial and social activities, and for a time it competed for prominence with its neighbors-the City of Washington and Alexandria. Newspapers printed in Georgetown covered commercial and social activities for both sides of the Potomac River, government activities in the City of Washington, and tidbits of foreign news. Perhaps surprisingly, editors of Georgetown newspapers often subscribed to newspapers from cities up and down the eastern seaboard of the United States, and routinely inserted marriage and death notices they deemed of interest to their audiences. This compilation reflects marriage and death notices in nine newspapers that were published in Georgetown during the period 1801-1838. Not all months are covered because not many newspapers survived for some periods. Newspapers represented here are taken from microfilm copies purchased from the Library of Congress. Georgetown lost its charter and was absorbed by the City of Washington; thus in October 1880, most street names were changed. The introductory material presents a map and a list of street names under the old and new systems. Also found is a list of early ministers that can be linked to a particular religion or church.

A system was established in 1812 whereby the District of Columbia courts would record all births, deaths, and marriages in the city. The information presented here is taken from "Marriage Register 1" which contained the names of the bride and groom and th

Extant records of the Alexandria Hustings Court which began to receive probates of wills and deeds and to grant administrations in 1782.