Southampton County Virginia USGenWeb Archives Newspapers.....Archives, 1940 

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"Suffolk (VA) News-Herald," Vol. 18, No. 120, Sun., Aug. 11, 1940, p. 1 

SOUTHAMPTON PRESERVES ITS ARCHIVE DATA 

County Government Activities Bound In Fifty Volumes 

  The Inventory of the County Archives of Virginia, compiled by the Historical 
Records Survey of the Works Projects Administration, No. 88, Southampton 
County, is a veritable encyclopedia of county government. 

  Southampton County sponsored the project and the Board of Supervisors 
appropriated a small sum, matched by the County School Board, to defray actual 
costs of mimeographing and binding 50 copies of the work.  The 50 completed 
volumes were presented to the Supervisors at the June meeting, each supervisor 
and county officer getting one copy and the remainder being put on file for 
public perusal at the Clerk's office in the courthouse at Courtland. 

  The work was under the direction of Miss Elizabeth B. Parker of Richmond, 
State Supervisor of the Historical Records Survey program, and was carried 
through by a number of different workers, the object having been to provide 
employment for needy historians, lawyers, teachers, research and clinical 
workers.  It was begun in January, 1938, and completed in December, 1939. 

Historical Sketch 

  The volume opens with a historical sketch of Southampton county.  One of the 
interesting facts given in connection with the creation of the county from 
Isle of Wight was that citizens of the part of Isle of Wight that is now 
Southampton felt aggrieved at having to meet near the "Black-Water" for 
general musters.  A complaint was made that an "abundance of poor people walk 
Thirty Miles" to muster.  Those not attending were subject to fine, but many 
preferred the fine to the hardship of attending compulsory militia training. 
An additional reason given for the request that another county be formed was 
that "the distance of the Justices is so far from Court, and no Conveniency of 
lodging there, that they seldom attend more than Six Times in a Year."  In 
1749, four years after this petition, Southampton County was formed.  The 
present courthouse building was completed in 1834 at a cost to the county of 
something over $4,000. 

  An outline of governmental organization gives the history of the development 
of the Virginia county, which in the beginning was much more like the English 
county or shire than government subdivisions were elsewhere in the colonies of 
the United States.  The second part of the volume of 265 pages deals with the 
various county officers and their records.  This section is both a history of 
the origin and development of each office from colonial times up to the 
present and an inventory and description of all records in the courthouse. 

  Although the work will be of particular help to the lawyer or business man 
it contains much of interest to other citizens and is the only reference of 
its kind available, containing, as it does, a detailed description of every 
county office and department and its functions.  The work is copiously 
documented and reflects a great amount of painstaking labor on the part of its 
compilers.  Any student of county government will find it amply worth his time 
to consult it frequently. 


Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by 
File Manager Matt Harris (zoobug64@aol.com). 

file at: 
http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/southampton/news/19400811nh.txt