Counting Virginia in the 1850 Census

Virginia might be one of the most difficult states to identify the 1850 census counties. And then to get any sort of really close and accurate counts of Lewis bearers in what was then that state. Virginia is very important as part of the study because the evidence suggests that it was one of the main arrival States for many Lewis immigrant families in the early colonial days.

Probably, the most perplexing problem seems to be that during the Civil War, most of the western counties split off from Virginia to create the current state of West Virginia. However, they were in Virginia for the 1850 and 1860 census.

Another problem is that Virginia during the mid 1800s was doing a lot of county re-organization. This re-organization had two aspects: one was in the re-organization, some counties that were listed in the 1850 census became extinct. I have not included any counties that were formed after 1850; however, I suspect I have missed some that became extinct. The other re-organization that began before 1850 was the creation of independent cities that became pseudo-counties as their population was not otherwise counted in a county.

When doing my normal searches with Ancestry, I have had to play some games coax out the data, especially for the counties that became part of what is now West Virginia. If you search Ancestry for Lewis’s who lived in Virginia, you see a total of 2929. However, the only way to get the county totals for those West Virginia counties is to say that the “Lived in” location was just the county name and then add Virginia as a Keyword to the search. For some counties you will have to do manual counting as you will get hits from other states.

Here is a spreadsheet of the Virginia 1850 data. You will see that I am only missing about 50 people which I am sure means I am missing one or more “counties”. I am hoping that someone can help me find the missing counties!

While reviewing the county by county data, I noticed that Virginia seems to be one of the most noticeable states for two indexing problems. First is that I found a high number of Virginia Lewis bearers where no birthplace was identified. The other was that there was a high number of Lewis’s where the birth place was listed as a county name and Ancestry then guessed at where that meant, not assuming the state being Virginia.

Northumberland county was a special problem. Northumberland count has 118 Lewis’s in 1850 census. 14 are listed as born in Virginia. (2 in Virginia and 12 in Northumberland), Northampton county has 9 Lewis’s, all thought to be born in England (Northamptonshire), although census clearly shows them as being born in Northampton. A brief scan of several counties shows many Lewis’s with no birth place identified or a county that has created erroneous counts in the various tabulations I have been doing.