Virginia Genealogy is being developed as a genealogical and historical resource for your personal use. It contains information and records for Virginia ancestry, family history, and genealogy. Specifically, it provides sources for birth records, death records, marriage records, census records, tax records, court records, and military records. It also provides some historical details about different times and people in Virginia history.
Virginia County Names
Virginia County Names: Two hundred and seventy years of Virginia History
This book tells the story of how Virginia’s counties received their names and, through those names, explores the history, thoughts, and sentiments of the people who named them. The county names themselves suggest a remarkable breadth of history and provide material for understanding Virginia’s colonial past from a perspective unlike that offered by the county names of any other state. While this is not intended as a history of Virginia, the names serve as a means of illuminating important portions of the Old Dominion’s history—the names being the magnet and the facts of Virginia history the iron filings drawn to them.
Every effort has been made to verify the facts presented and, where certainty was not possible, to indicate the degree of doubt involved. Because the origins and associations of Virginia’s county names extend far beyond the boundaries of the Commonwealth, the account reaches back as far as 1370 in Scottish history and forward to the Jamestown Exposition of 1907, where many men for whom Virginia counties were named were commemorated.
The subtitle, Two Hundred and Seventy Years of Virginia History, reflects the principal span of the narrative. It begins with the founding of Jamestown in 1607 and follows the naming of Virginia’s counties through 1880, when the state’s youngest county was organized.
Recent Virginia Genealogy
Virginia County Names: Two hundred and seventy years of Virginia History
Virginia County Names: Two hundred and seventy years of Virginia History aims to tell how the Virginia counties got their names, and in telling the story it endeavors to show that the thoughts and feelings of the Virginians are reflected in the names the counties bear.
Junius Parker Fishburn
Junius Parker Fishburn was a prominent Roanoke newspaper and radio executive, banker, and civic leader. President of the Times-World Corporation, he also served on banking, railway, utility, educational, and civic boards. A Princeton graduate and Presbyterian, Fishburn married Katherine Rodes Nelson in 1926; they had two children, Sally Hart and Robert Nelson.
Junius Blair Fishburn
Junius Blair Fishburn’s biography traces his rise from a young Roanoke banker to a leading financial, publishing, and civic figure in Virginia. It details his family heritage, marriage and children, decades with the National Exchange and First National Exchange Banks, leadership in business, major land and park donations, educational service, church work, and extensive organizational affiliations.
Charles Vernon Eddy
Charles Vernon Eddy of Winchester, Virginia, was a printer, publisher, librarian, civic leader, and prominent Freemason. Co-founder of the Eddy Press, he later led Handley Library and served numerous community organizations. Elected Sovereign Grand Master of the Allied Masonic Degrees in 1948, Eddy was also active in Presbyterian church work, the Red Cross, Boy Scouts, and local historical organizations.
Samuel Thomas Brown
Samuel Thomas Brown (1896–) was a Cornell-trained mechanical engineer, industrial executive, and consulting engineer who led several coal companies and the Virginia Iron, Coal and Coke Company. A United States Naval Reserve ensign, he belonged to prominent civic, fraternal, and business organizations and lived in Roanoke with his wife, Katherine, and their three children.
Major General Evarts Walton Opie
Major General Evarts Walton Opie (1893–?) of Staunton, Virginia, was a newspaper publisher, civic leader, and longtime Virginia National Guard officer. He led the 116th Infantry through expansion and wartime training, supervised combat replacements during World War II, and retired in 1946 as a major general. The biography also traces his family, Episcopal service, marriage, and children.
Eugene Paul Sakers
Eugene Paul Sakers (1922–?) was a Baltimore native who served in the U.S. Coast Guard during World War II before becoming a commercial pilot, flight instructor, and executive secretary of the Winchester Chamber of Commerce. This biographical and genealogical account covers his education, career, military service, Episcopal faith, and 1949 marriage to Marcia Whipple.
Robert L. Lynn
Robert L. Lynn was a longtime Roanoke business leader and president of S. H. Heironimus Company, one of the Shenandoah Valley’s leading department stores. A Virginia Military Institute graduate, he was active in civic and religious organizations. Lynn married Virginia Dawson in 1935, and they had three children: Robert, Elizabeth, and Richard.
Robert Lee Lynn
Robert Lee Lynn rose from a clerk in Roanoke’s Heironimus and Brugh store to president of the S. H. Heironimus Company, shaping its growth into a leading Shenandoah Valley department store. A civic, commercial, and church leader, he served the Chamber of Commerce, Rotary, Calvary Baptist Church, and other organizations before his death in 1936.
William Daniel Staples
William Daniel Staples (1907–?) was a Virginia lawyer, editor, and public-relations director. After graduating from Princeton and the University of Virginia School of Law, he practiced in Roanoke, served with the War Production Board, and undertook World War II military-government and civilian-supply assignments. He later directed public relations for West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company and married Mary Elizabeth Macdowell.
Frank Armstrong, Sr.
Frank Armstrong Sr. was a West Virginia-born fruit-products executive, cattle breeder, and longtime leader of the National Fruit Product Company. Born in Central Station in 1871, he worked in wholesale groceries before helping establish the company in 1913. He later managed 1,300 acres near Haywood, breeding Aberdeen-Angus cattle. He married Nellie Steel and had two children.
