Talk:Census Records for Virginia

This is a review by the Virginia Historical Society: from their quarterly - January 1989 The Virginia Magazine Vol. 97, No. 1,

"The 1787 Census of Virginia. Compiled by Netti Schreiner-Yantis and Florene Speakman Love. Springfield, VA: Genealogical Books in Print. 1987. Three volumes. xiv, 2,022 pp.

". . . The United States Census Bureau used state enumerations of the early 1780s to prepare its names of heads of Virginia households in Richmond and thirty-nine counties published in 1908. In 1940 Augusta B. Fothergill and John M. Naugle published a supplementary volume . . . . The 1787 Census of Virginia offers a listing that is based on a single year more comparable to the 1790 census, that is extracted from a more complete set of records, because only six counties and one city lacked returns for 1787 . . . This publication was conceived for genealogists but will be as useful to historians. Because Virginia held so large a portion of the United States population when the Constitution was framed and was the origin of so many families whose descendants migrated to other states, this comprehensive listing will be a primary source for genealogical research . . . Although the authors indicate that their 'work is not intended to provide intensified research on any one county' (p. 1302), it includes material valuable to historians. For instance, it is easy to check a person's property in several counties to ascertain wealth. . . Furthermore, the extensive taxes levied y Virginia in the 1780s to repay Revolutionary debts provide information that is not available for any other comparable period. Only then were slave children under twelve counted . . . The taxation of cattle recorded names of Virginians, often women, without tithable males or females slaves in their households. This enumeration provides the most complete document of female-headed households before 1810. . . "