Record Atlas
5 eras · 1607–2026 · 40 places

West Virginia - Virginia's counties west of the Blue Ridge

Wheeling, Charleston, Parkersburg, Martinsburg, Harpers Ferry, Morgantown. Which empire held this ground in which years — and, the part that matters, which archive that means.

Whose archive this ground was

YearsWho held itWhose archive that means
1607–1776 Colony of Virginia FamilySearch

Part of the Colony of Virginia, a royal colony from 24 May 1624.
1776–1861 Commonwealth of Virginia - the counties that became West Virginia FamilySearch · National Archives Catalog (NARA)

Part of the Commonwealth of Virginia until 1863.
1861–1863 Restored Government of Virginia (Wheeling), Union-aligned FamilySearch · National Archives Catalog (NARA)

Virginia's secession convention voted to secede on 17 April 1861 and secession was ratified on 23 May 1861. Conventions at Wheeling in May and June 1861 declared its acts void, a Restored Government was organised with Francis H. Pierpont as governor on 20 June 1861, and voters approved statehood on 24 October 1861.
1863–1870 State of West Virginia FamilySearch · National Archives Catalog (NARA)

Admitted to the Union on 20 June 1863 as the 35th state; Berkeley and Jefferson counties voted in 1863 to join it. Virginia sued over those two counties in 1866, Congress recognised the transfer by joint resolution on 10 March 1866, and the Supreme Court ruled for West Virginia in 1870.
1870–2026 State of West Virginia FamilySearch · National Archives Catalog (NARA) · Chronicling America

Counties first recorded births and deaths in 1853 under Virginia law; statewide registration began in 1917, county clerks hold the county registers, and the state death-certificate record books went to the West Virginia State Archives. The Supreme Court rejected Maryland's claim to land north of the South Branch Potomac in two decisions of 1910.

The rings are approximate — deliberately. They exist to shade which filing system a place fell under, not to adjudicate a border. A place near a ring's edge should be checked against both neighbours.

See the whole span, 1607–2026, on the map →

The map takes a range, and a range that crosses one of the rows above is where records get lost: the family never moved, and the archive on the far side of the handover will tell you it holds nothing.

40 places on this ground

1742 FamilySearch collections reach this ground

Ranked with the regional ones first — a collection for a province is usually a better lead than a national index, though the national index is often where a name is actually written down. A free account opens the images.

…and 1682 more.

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