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Official Records - County Records - Accomack County

Accomack County is the northernmost county on Virginia's Eastern Shore. As one of the original counties established in 1634, Accomack has a large collection of records dating back to the earliest years of local government in colonial Virginia. In the first federal census of 1790, Accomack contained 4,262 slaves, or 31 percent of the total population of 13,959. The county also contained a large population of free blacks, and interactions between black and white Virginians in Accomack reveal much of the complexity of Virginia's society. You may read excerpts from county order books for the following years.

Trial of Esther, April 1767.
Trial of Esther for murder of another female slave, April 29, 1767. Her master, John Wise, Jr., was one of the justices.

Presentment for "negro dealing," or trading with blacks, April 1767.
Littleton Reid, or Read tried for selling to a black, April 30, 1767. Reid had been tried and acquitted on a technicality for the same offense in 1764. His fine on this occasion was four times the value of the goods he bought.

Another case of a white man charged with buying goods from a slave, August 1767.
Holden's slave Dublin was named in another case of a white man dealing with a slave.

Trial of Glasgow, September 1767.
Glasgow, tried for rape, described variously as "abusing" and "ravishing."

A case of a white woman dealing with a slave, October 1767.
These cases were common on the Eastern Shore.

John Custis charged with interfering wth the capture of several runaway slaves, December 1767.
Custis was a member of a well known family on the Eastern Shore.

A woman charged with bearing an illegitimate mixed race child, December 1767.
The Eastern Shore had a sizeable free black population that dated back to the seventeenth century. Charges of buying and selling from slaves and mixed race relationships occur frequently in the records of Accomack and Northampron counties. Note that Violetta would be sold into servitude if she failed to pay the fine, a likely occurence as the penalty of fiteen pounds would be difficult for her to pay.

A woman sentenced to thirty-nine lashes, December 1767.
Mary Claywell, convicted of dealing with a slave in October, receives her punishment.