Tracing West Virginia Families Across the State Lines
Your ancestors did not carry a map with the modern borders drawn on it. They followed the ridges and the rivers, and the ridges and the rivers do not stop at a state line. A family that lived in what is now West Virginia moved as the country let them move, down a...
Finding Coal Camp Ancestors: Company, Camp, and Church Records
If your people worked coal in southern West Virginia, and for a couple of generations in places like McDowell, Logan, and Mingo nearly everyone did, you have an advantage most family researchers never learn about. The company wrote everything down. A coal operator ran...
West Virginia Land Grants and the Sims Index Explained
In a state settled by land grants, the land usually keeps a longer paper trail than the person standing on it. Your great-great-grandfather may not show up in a birth record, a census that spells his name right, or a marriage the county took the trouble...
Beyond the Certificate: Deeds, Estates, and Chancery Suits
A birth or death certificate hands you a date. The rest of the courthouse hands you a life. If you have only ever pulled vital records, you have been reading the thinnest file in the building and walking past the thick ones. The deeds, the will and estate packets, the...
