William D. Bennett

Currituck County, North Carolina: Eighteenth Century Tax & Militia Records William D. Bennett

Currituck County, North Carolina was one of the original precincts established in Albemarle County in 1670. The original Currituck County includes present-day Currituck and Dare counties and parts of Hyde and Tyrell counties. Nearly all of the early records of Currituck County itself have been lost; however, many references to people living in Currituck during its first hundred years can be found in two crucial collections of primary sources for the Tarheel State--North Carolina Colonial Records and The Colonial Records of North Carolina Series II.

In this volume, William Doub Bennett, a leading authority on the colonial records of North Carolina, has brought together a comprehensive list of inhabitants of Currituck County from 1700 to 1780 as found in tax and military records buried in the aforementioned colonial records, as well as in British records and in published works.

The lists transcribed by Mr. Bennett range from corn lists, quit rent lists, and jurymen lists,to tithables and tax lists, petitions, and militia lists. While all the lists have the virtue of placing a man in Currituck County at a particular time, some also give relationships for taxable-aged sons in a household, distinguish between single and married men, identify the race of the taxable, or give the amount of acreage owned by the colonist. The nearly thirty separate lists discovered by Mr. Bennett, extending from 1700 to 1779, which are arranged in chronological order, are preceded by a Foreword by noted genealogist Jo White Linn and a valuable Introductory essay on sources by the author. The complete name index at the back of the volume allows the researcher to turn to any of the more than 5,000 names in the volume with scarcely a moment of effort.