Cohabitation registers are among the most important genealogical resources for African-Americans attempting to connect their family lines back through the murky past to their enslaved…
Portsmouth, Virginia, occupied by the Union army, was the scene of a wedding in November 1863. The happy couple was Charles “Charley” Butler, a private…
The conservation of the original pages of the Henry County Cohabitation Register has recently been completed. Previously, only a poorly and confusingly microfilmed version of this…
The Library of Virginia has completed the digitization and transcription of the last of the cohabitation registers in its possession, the Henry County Cohabitation Register, 1866.…
The Library of Virginia is pleased to announce the addition of Scott County and Washington County to the cohabitation register digitization project. This project, via the Virginia…
The Library of Virginia is pleased to announce the addition of Surry County to the cohabitation register digitization project. This project, via the Virginia Memory website, aims to…
The Library of Virginia is pleased to announce the addition of records from Fluvanna, Goochland, and Montgomery Counties to the cohabitation register digitization project. This project,…
The staff at Montgomery County’s Circuit Court Clerk’s Office recently rediscovered the county’s cohabitation register, one of the most valuable records used for African American…
Interested in what’s new in the archives at the Library of Virginia? You can find out in two reports compiled quarterly by LVA staffers: The Library of Virginia…
Genealogists researching enslaved African Americans face serious challenges. Records that exist for the free population do not exist for the enslaved since slaves were considered…