Tax Lists of Henry County, Virginia, 1778-1880

By: Lela C. Adams, Pub. 1973, Reprinted 2021, 34 pages, Index, ISBN #0-89308-361-5.

In 1776, Patrick County was cut off of Pittsylvania County and was named for Patrick Henry. When first formed, Henry County embraced the whole of what is now Patrick County and the greater portion of present Franklin County, VA. Some of the least know records for the state of Virginia are the Land Tax Lists. Within these land tax lists, you will discover not only the owner’s name and acreage but with a little effort you will be able to follow a family through its land holdings. You can see when a person dies, when he sells out and leaves the county, when he passes his land down to his children. The reader will also discover the inclusion of Land Patents. Of special interest, after the owners name sometimes a set of initials will appear. These can mean one of several things: they can be the initials of the person he purchased the land from or they can mean the location of the land such as a creeks name or geographical feature. These tax lists can be extremely important because sometimes when there was not a will or a deed, the transaction appears in these lists and nowhere else.