Facts on Local Church Records

Unlike New England, colonial Virginia left few early church records. The first Virginians were members of the Church of England, or Anglican church, which became the Episcopal Church in 1786. Early parish registers are incomplete and challenging to use. Parish boundaries changed rapidly and are hard to pinpoint.
  Since colonial times, many religious groups have established congregations in Virginia, including Baptist, Catholic, Jewish, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Quaker or Friends, to name a few. Except for the Quakers, few of these groups kept records containing such genealogical information as birth, marriage, and death dates. A number of church vestry books and registers have been published and are available at The Library of Virginia and the FHL.

• Virginia Old Churches, Vol. 1
• Virginia Old Churches, Vol. 2
• Virginia Early Quaker Records
• The Virginia Baptist Historical Society

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Facts on Local Cemetery Records

   The list of published tombstone inscriptions for Virginia, if a comprehensive list existed, would be lengthy. The DAR has compiled an extensive collection of Virginia tombstone inscriptions. The collection, along with other cemetery record publications, can be found at the DAR Library in Washington, D.C., The Library of Virginia, the Virginia Historical Society, and the FHL.

Cemetery interment registers and gravestone inscriptions may often be sources of useful information for Virginia researchers. The state government does not have a long, uninterrupted, centralized file of birth and death records that are readily accessible to researchers. Wars, floods, and fires have destroyed the vital record of many of Virginia's counties. Oftentimes, information found in cemetery records and on gravestones cannot be found anywhere else. When looking for a specific cemetery in Virginia, you may wish to start with the following comprehensive resource.

Virginia Cemeteries: A Guide to Resources, edited by Anne M. Hogg, with Dennis A. Tosh (Charlottesville, 1986) contains descriptions and locations of hundreds of Virginia cemeteries, which are indexed both by cemetery name and by location. For cemeteries that were still being used or maintained when the editors were compiling the data, the name and address of the keeper is also included, although some of that information may now be obsolete.

It is also possible to search for specific cemeteries through your computer. Use your search engine to enter specific keywords.

Books abstracting the information on tombstones and/or registers are also useful resources. Check the Online Catalog of the Library of Virginia by going to the Library's home page.

An online series on Research in Virginia Documents. Prepared by Daphne Gentry, Publications and Education Services Division. Copyright by The Library of Virginia; this note may be reproduced in full if proper credit is given and no changes are made.

• Virginia Military Dead Database - ongoing project indexing more than 700 sources and listing approximately 32,326 Virginians who have died in service.

   Cemetery records and gravestone inscriptions are a rich source of information for family historians. Cemetery and other sources of information associated with death include:

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