Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

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Use Restrictions

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Preferred Citation

New Kent County (Va.) Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands Records, Local government records collection, New Kent County Court Records. The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Va. 23219.

Acquisition Information

These items came to the Library of Virginia in shipments of court papers from New Kent County.

Historical Information

New Kent County may have been named either for the English county of Kent or for Kent Island, in the upper waters of the Chesapeake Bay. William Claiborne, a native of Kent who had been driven from Kent Island by Lord Baltimore, was a prominent resident of the New Kent area about 1654 when the county was formed from York County. Part of James City County was added in 1767. The county seat is New Kent.

Records were destroyed when John Posey set fire to the courthouse on 15 July 1787. Many records were lost when the courthouse was partially destroyed by fire during Civil War hostilities in 1862. Additional records were burned in Richmond on 3 April 1865, where they had been moved for safekeeping during the Civil War.

The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands was a federal agency created by the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, passed on March 3, 1865. Also known as the "Freedmen's Bureau", this agency was responsible for aiding refugees of the Civil War, especially former slaves, in the areas of education, employment and health care. Meant to last for only one year after the war, the bureau was operational from June 1865 to December 1868.

Scope and Content

New Kent County (Va.) Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands Records, 1866, includes a list of male freed negroes over the age of 16, 1866 January 12, that records the full names of freed African-Americans over the age of 16, names of their former owners or their current residence, and tax levied on the 257 former slaves. The list was gathered for the purpose of collecting a county levy. The collection also includes a copy of a circular mailed to clerk of New Kent County that explained how to implement the act to legalize the marriages of colored persons now cohabiting as husband and wife.

Related Material

New Kent County is one of Virginia's Lost Records Localities. Additional New Kent County Records may be found in the Virginia Lost Records Localities Collection at the Library of Virginia. Search the Lost Records Localities Digital Collection available at Virginia Memory.

For more information and a listing of lost records localities see Lost Records research note .

Index Terms

Corporate Names:

• New Kent County (Va.) Circuit Court

Subjects:

• African Americans--History.
• Freedmen--Virginia--New Kent County.
• Slaveholders--Virginia--New Kent County.
• Slaves--Emancipation--Virginia--New Kent County.

Geographical Names:

• New Kent County (Va.)--History--19th century

Genre and Form Terms:

• Legal correspondence--Virginia--New Kent County.
• Local government records--Virginia--New Kent County.

Added Entry - Corporate Name:

• United States--Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands.

Adjunct Descriptive Data