GenealogyBlog

If you have Virginia ancestors, I stumbled across a website you might want to check out. The website is called Virginia Memory . It is from the Library of Virginia. This website has a vast collection of digitial materials.

Some of these materials include;

• Virginia History and Culture – War of 1812 Bicentennial Collection
• Biographical and Genealogical – S. Bassett French Biographical Sketches
• Maps and Architecture – Alan M. Voorhees Map Collection
• County and City Research – Chancery Records Index
• African American Resources – Cohabitation Registers
• Military Service – Revolutiionary War Virginia State Pensions
• Military Service – Robert E. Lee Camp Confederate Soldiers’ Home Applications for Admission
• Newspapers – R. M. S. Titanic: Ninety-Nine Years Later
• Historic Virgina Government – Early Virginia Religious Petitions, 1774-1802
• Web Archiving – Jamestown 2007 Commemoration Collection
• Photograph Collections – 1939 World’s Fair Photograph Collection
• Land Office Patents & Grants – Virginia Land Office Patents and Grants/Northern Neck Grants and Surveys

Many of these digital collections would be hard to find or utilize without the Library of Virginia making them available on-line. Some collections such as the Cohabitation Registers might provide the only documentation of a marriage of colored persons after the Civil War. Here’s the website description of this collection; “A cohabitation register, or as it is properly titled, Register of Colored Persons…cohabiting together as Husband and Wife on 27th February 1866, was the legal vehicle by which former slaves legitimized both their marriages and their children. …”.

If you have Virginia ancestors, it would be well worth your time to explore Virginia Memory .