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Warwick County, which merged with the city of Warwick in 1952, was one of Virginia’s original shires upon its creation in 1634. (The name changed from Warwick River County to simply Warwick County in 1642–1643.)

The original records of Warwick County have never been transcribed—until now. Thanks to the prodigious efforts of Mr. Richard Dunn, we are now in possession of a meticulously transcribed volume that purports to gather up the crumbling documents of colonial Warwick—some of them from the 1640s—and to make them accessible to researchers for the first time. To make their transcription as comprehensive as possible, Mr. Dunn examined original records not only from institutions like the Library of Virginia, Virginia Historical Society, and Swem Library, College of William and Mary, but also from the New York Historical Society, Rosenback Museum and Library, Newport News Museum and Archives, Virginia War Museum, Huntington Library, and county archives throughout Virginia.

Arranged by repository and thereunder chronologically, the entries derive mostly from court order books, record books, minutes, cattle accounts, and a variety of miscellaneous material. As is characteristic of court records in general, Warwick County’s records range over a multitude of contemporary affairs, such as estate settlements, petitions, appointments of local officials, orphan and bastardy cases, licenses, payments of debts, petty criminal matters, surveys and boundary disputes, the swearing in of justices of the peace, and so on. This consolidated edition also includes previously unpublished lists of Warwick County church wardens, commissions of the peace, constables, juries, sheriffs, “surveyors,�? vestrymen, and other functionaries not included in previous ones. The transcriptions place upwards of 10,000 Virginia ancestors in Warwick County at a particular moment during the colonial period. Thanks to the complete name index, these heretofore inaccessible ancestors have been rescued from oblivion.