"Tracing Our Roots" Newsletter Archive (A monthly genealogy newsletter written by the late Brenda Kellow, dec'd, for the Plano Star Courier newspaper. We've included all the ones we could recover.)
North Carolina is important to researchers because of the major colonial migration through the state. Researchers often point out the value of searching the massive data on the state and declare it as the starting point for settlers moving south and west. When chartered in 1663 North and South Carolina were known only as Carolina in honor of Charles the First Carolus being Latin for Charles.
The first permanent English settlers in North Carolina were immigrants from the tidewater area of southeastern Virginia. These first of these "overflow" settlers moved into the Albemarle area of northeast North Carolina around 1650. Naturally, taxing those who came into the area was one of the first acts of the colonial governments. The tax monies were handled by the legislature, which was summoned into session by the governor. Then as it is today, taxation was an inflammatory issue in the government and with the people.
Tax records are important because they identify when someone moved into the area, record the period of residence, and stops when the person moved or died. Men serving in the militia were all taxed and listed in their respective Military Districts, but not all men serving in the Continental Line were taxed. Important to tracking early settlers are two books compiled by Clarence E. Ratcliff. The first book, North Carolina Taxpayers 1701-1786, lists the names of taxpayers living in about half of the state of North Carolina formed before 1786 who were legislated to pay poll taxes or property taxes. Ratcliff took the majority of the records from the tax lists in the North Carolina State Archives and supplemented these with tax lists of headrights and landrights extracted and published in the North Carolina Genealogy Journal.
Ratcliff s second book, North Carolina Taxpayers 1679-1790, includes the remainder of 29,000 taxpayers through 1790. All the names are alphabetical, and list county of residence. Both are available from Genealogical Publishing Company, 1001 N. Calvert St., Baltimore, MD 21202, or over the Internet at www.genealogical.com/ for $25 each plus $4 shipping and handling for the first title and $1.50 for each additional title.
DEEDS
In order to follow colonial settlers, deed record searches are also a must. An important tip is to always define the county s history: When was it formed; from what county was it formed and when; and the dates and names of counties formed from it. For instance, Albermarle County was an early county from which many other counties evolved. One such county is Bertie County.
James and Henry Bertie, for whom the county was named, probably never dreamed of the significance Bertie County would play in North Carolina s history, or of our nation. This is probably true also of the first settler, Nathaniel Batts, who lived in this northeastern part of the state as early as 1657. This was long before it was formed from Chowan County in 1722, or Chowan was carved from Albermarle County in 1664-68 the first permanent settlement in the Carolinas. Bertie was chopped up again and again when parts were taken to form Tyrrell, Edgecombe, Northampton and Hertford. These counties in turn were also sculpted into other important counties.
There are many resources available on Bertie County, but an important book on its deed records is Colonial Bertie County North Carolina, Deed Books A-H, 1720-1757, abstracted by Mary Best Bell. It sells for $30 and is available from Southern Historical Press, Inc., Post Office Box 1267, Greenville, SC 29602, or call 1-800-233-0142. I found that it is also available from www.Amazon.com.
RootsWeb updates SSDI
The Social Security Death Index at www.RootsWeb.com is now current through June 2003. They report that it contains 70, 901,606 records. RootsWeb is a free database and it does not change any data submitted from the Social Security Administration.
Brenda Kellow, dec'd, Certified Genealogist and Certified Genealogical Instructor, had a Bachelor s Degree in history and taught genealogy courses at the local Community College and computer genealogy at the University.
