What are the best colonial era US Southern Colonies sources?

Question

I'm compiling the best sources to recommend to those who are researching colonial-era (1600-1776) US South (Maryland, Virginia, Carolinas and Georgia) and could use some help.

What are your go-to sources for this time and place?

Comments

If I could give best question I've seen in a long time accolades, this would be it, Jillaine.  And what wonderful answers you are getting!  Thanks so much for thinking to ask in G2G for all of us.

Answer 1

• Parish Registers available courtesy of https://archive.org/
• https://www.jstor.org/ articles that cite actual sources (if the article is not available for viewing, the same issue is sometimes found in Google Books)
• Library of Virginia: https://www.lva.virginia.gov/
• Maryland State Archives: https://msa.maryland.gov/

Two major difficulties of Southern genealogy: burned counties and repeating names. Sometimes following land records is the best way to figure out which fact might be for which person (I'm currently working on the Virginia Peter Joneses - among the many are three different Peters baptized in 1731; fortunately, they're all in the Bristol Parish Register, so THOSE Peters are easily distinguished). Each generation names their children after their siblings and they pretty much all come from the same Peter, so each generation has x-number of contemporary Peter Joneses in the land records of the same parish/county or neighboring counties - x being the number of children in the previous generation.

Comments

just looked over the Notes section for the Virginia Peter Joneses page I'm working on - totally forgot about USGenWeb & DAR's Genealogical Resource System.

USGenWeb has a ton of transcriptions of wills and deeds that are invaluable.

DAR's search page: https://services.dar.org/Public/DAR_Research/search/default.cfm?Tab_ID=1

The main record for a Patriot Ancestor has been reviewed & notes added when there are issues. I don't believe that the descendant records have been reviewed, but they provide valuable clues.

The DAR records reminded me about William Graves' site: http://revwarapps.org/ - "Southern Campaigns Revolutionary War Pension Statements & Rosters" - which can be a treasure trove of info, depending on the interviewer, about pensioners.

Also, Tyler's Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography is very helpful, but he makes assumptions here and there - enough that you need to take everything with a grain of salt.

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also, check to see if Virginia Project has a space page for a particular county - for example, Accomack County. In the table of Virginia Counties, if  the county name is clickable, it has a space page.

Answer 2

North Carolina land records at http://www.nclandgrants.com/

South Carolina archives at https://scdah.sc.gov/

North Carolina colonial wills at https://digital.ncdcr.gov/digital/custom/secretary-of-state-wills

Answer 3

For Virginia Counties, we maintain a growing list of county specific sources, each county linked from here:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Virginia_Counties_and_Parishes#counties

Answer 4

I find Mike Marshall's site Early Colonial Settlers of Southern Maryland and Virginia's Northern Neck Counties very valuable because he adds extensive extracts from wills and land records to his entries.  

He does get family relationships wrong sometimes.  I use him when I'm confident about the family relationships and want quick access to an excellent variety of supporting documents.

Comments

I agree, relationships ate often speculative, but transcripts of wills, deeds, other documents and sources are spot on.

Answer 5

Jillaine

I have compiled a large number of sources into a list that covers the colonial period in the Southern Colonies.   Links to these sources are grouped by alphabetical and geographical order.   They consist primarily of reliable, derivative sources that have been transcribed or taken from the original sources such as still existing colonial era records.   Although many colonial era records have been lost due to destruction,  "Original" colonial records can still be found, but not online.  The sources we find online (which sometimes includes images of the original documents) are derivative, meaning that they are copies or have been taken from the original records.   These online sources can vary in reliability,  the best of which  are accurate transcriptions of the originals.   As with any derivative source they should be evaluated independently for accuracy and reliability.   This list is a work in progress and I do have plans to update it with information regarding the reliability of each specific source.   Keep in mind that the list contains other sources not specifically related to colonial America but which may also be of use to others.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:My_Source_Library_%28arr_by_subject_and_time%29

Comments

Looks like a wonderful list of sources! You might add South Carolina's Department of Archives and History: www.scdah.sc.gov.

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Thank you Betty.