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This Family Archive CD identifies 350,000 individuals in a unique collection of colonial Virginia source records, namely, wills and administrations, marriage records, family histories, tax records, newspaper abstracts, and military records. The materials drawn on in this compilation are especially useful because they were collected from local sources and cover a period of time before centralized record-keeping was established. In all, this CD contains images of the pages of ten books that were originally published by the Genealogical Publishing Company. Among the ten are some of the most important Virginia reference books ever published, many of them classics!

Clayton Torrence's Virginia Wills and Administrations, 1632-1800, for example, lists the names of more than 50,000 individuals for whom wills and administrations were recorded in the various counties of Virginia, some of which are now in West Virginia. Marriages of Some Virginia Residents, 1607-1800, a large two-volume work by Dorothy Wulfeck, presents a collection of 40,000 marriages with references to a quarter-million individuals, all of whom are identified through ministers" returns, marriage bonds, Bible records, parish records, and so on. Among the more unusual resources is a collection of genealogical abstracts from 18th-century Virginia newspapers which names thousands of individuals appearing in some 7,000 issues of 80 different newspapers. And in Virginia Tax Payers, 1782-1787, there is a list of Virginians that precedes even the first census listing of 1790.

With its emphasis on the colonial period--a murky area of genealogical endeavor, at best--this CD combines a most fertile collection of books for research in early Virginia source records. The following books, united by a single electronic index, are included on the CD:

*Virginia Tax Payers, 1782-1787
*Genealogical Abstracts from 18th-Century Virginia Newspapers
*Virginia Wills and Administrations, 1632-1800
*Marriages of Some Virginia Residents, 1607-1800. 2 vols.
*Historical Collections of Virginia
*Gleanings of Virginia History
*Virginia Wills Before 1799
*Virginia Court Records in Southwestern Pennsylvania
*Early Quaker Records in Virginia
*Index to Obituary Notices

System Requirements: You must have a CD-ROM drive, and in order to read the CD you must use either the Family Archive Viewer (version 4.0 or higher), which is available as a free download at http://www.genealogical.com/content/dlfav6.html, or Family Tree Maker for Windows, version 4.0 or higher (Family Tree Maker software can be ordered from www.FamilyTreeMaker.com).

To access information on our Family Archive CDs using the Family Archive Viewer:

1. Install the Family Archive Viewer CD or download it from http://www.genealogy.com/dlfav6.html.
2. Start the Viewer if it is not already running
3. Insert the CD you wish to view into the CD-ROM drive. If you have 2 or more CD-ROM drives, the CD must be placed in the first one.
4. The CD should open automatically, but users of later versions of the Family Archive Viewer must click the CD/magnifying glass icon in the top toolbar (above the template in some versions) to read the CD.
5. When the screen entitled "About this Family Archive" appears, click OK where prompted.

To access information on our Family Archive CDs using Family Tree Maker:

1. Start your Family Tree Maker and open a Family File. (If the program is already running, skip to Step 2.)
2. Insert the CD in your computer's CD-ROM drive. (If you have 2 or more CD-ROM drives, the CD must be placed in the first one.)
3. From the View menu, select Family Finder, or select the Family Finder icon from the toolbar.
4. For FTM 2005, FTM 2006, or Version 16, you must go to the View menu, select Data CD, then View CD. For FTM 2008 or higher, you must download the Family Archive Viewer.

To search the CD for names, select the Search Expert button in the top right of your screen, then select "Search this archive for someone NOT from your Family File." You can also search for names by using the Index.

Note: If a window opens that contains a list of files on the CD, simply close it.

See also these Virginia books and CDs:
Early Virginia Immigrants
Adventurers of Purse and Person Virginia, 1607-1624/5
Virginia Colonial Records [CD]
Virginia Genealogies and Biographies [CD]