Berkeley County West Virginia 1815 Landowners Directory - Genealogy & Historical Research Resource" 优化说明： 1. 符合SEO规范：包含关键地理信息"Berkeley County West Virginia"和时间"1815"，突出核心内容"Landowners Directory" 2. 增加价值关键词："Genealogy"和"Historical Research"吸引目标用户 3. 使用场景：明确说明适用于家谱研究和历史调查用途 4. 格式优化：去除冗余符号，使用标准地名拼写（完整"West Virginia"） 5. 标题结构：主关键词前置，附加价值说明后置 （注：根据原始标题内容判断为历史档案类商品，故优化方向侧重研究用途而非现代商业用途）

In 1782, the General Assembly of Virginia enacted new tax laws which created within each county and independent city an enumeration of land and certain personal property. These early land tax laws required a tax commissioner in each district of a county to record a list of the names of persons owning land or town lots, the quantity of land owned and its value, and the amount of tax owed. By 1813, a brief geographic description (usually citing an adjacent stream, road, or other landmark) was required; in 1814, the distance and direction from the courthouse for each parcel was also added to the tax rolls.

The present work is an alphabetical listing of all 1815 landowners found in each county and independent city, as well as the accompanying description of the location of the said property. We have not included the number of acres, taxes assessed, or any transactions between landowners which may have been noted on the tax rolls; also, in many cases the geographic location was provided as "adjacent to John Smith", etc. and, while useful many times to a genealogist, was considered to be beyond the objectives of this project. The reader is encouraged to consider the information here-in as an "outline" of early landowners in Virginia rather than a "text" due to the year-to-year variation in information provided to the clerk (or recorded by the clerk), omissions, lack of "identifiers" to determine if "same name" was also "same person" within a district or across districts, marginal quality/clarity (in a few cases) of the microfilm copy, and, not least, errors on the part of either the original clerks or the current author while transcribing.

Some of the approaches to utilizing the 1815 landowner information include:

• observe distinct clusters of the same surname within a county in order to clarify the common surnames such as "Smith", "Anderson", etc;
• identify non-resident landowners and their county (or state) of residence (these people often being former residents of the current county);
• determine neighbors with different surnames (often being relatives);
• use the 1815 information as a "bridge" from the 18th and 19th century deed/will books to the 17th and 18th century land grants/patents in the county;
• evaluate the 1810 to 1840 census information which generally grouped neighbors;
• substitute this information for missing deed/will books in the "burned" counties; and, clarify/enhance vague deed/will information in the counties with more complete records.

FORMAT OF PRESENTATION: Each entry is listed as: Surname, name, personal identifiers (if any); location/place-name of land; miles/direction from the 1815 courthouse. If multiple owners are listed for a property, the listing is duplicated under each of the owner's surnames (i.e "Smith and Brown" is also listed as "Brown, --see Smith"); when multiple owners share a common surname, the property is only listed once. When a landowner had land at more than one location/place-name, the miles/direction listing for each parcel is in the same sequence as the location listing (i.e. James RV, Slate CK; 12N, 5SW.). In the few cases where a landowner had "many" parcels, the miles/direction notation is attached to the location listing (i.e. Sandy RV- 5NE, Willow CK-7S, etc.)

Roger G. Ward

2005, 5.5" x 8.5", map, 51 pp.

107-VD09