A Place In Time: Colonial Middlesex County, VA, 1650-1750

This dataset was produced by Darrett B. and Anita H. Rutman while researching their book <em>A Place in Time: Middlesex County Virginia, 1650-1750</em> and the companion volume, <em>A Place in Time: Explicatus</em> (both New York: Norton, 1984). Together, these works were intended as an ethnography of the English settlers of colonial Middlesex County, which lies on the Chesapeake Bay. The Rutmans created this dataset by consulting documentary records from Middlesex and Lancaster Counties (Middlesex was split from Lancaster in the late 1660s) and material artifacts, including gravestones and house lots. The documentary records include information about birth, marriage, death, migration, land patents and conveyances, probate, church matters, and government matters. The Rutmans organized this material by person involved in the recorded events, producing over 12,000 individual biographical sheets. The biographical sheets contain as much information as could be found for each individual, including dates of birth, marriage, and death; children's names and dates of birth and death; names of parents and spouses; appearance in wills, transaction receipts, and court proceedings; occupation and employers; and public service. This process is described in detail in Chapter 1 of <em>A Place in Time: Middlesex County Virginia, 1650-1750</em>. The Rutmans' biographical sheets have been archived at the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond, Virginia. To produce this dataset, most of the sheets were photographed (those with minimal information -- usually only a name and one date -- were omitted). Information from the sheets was then hand-keyed and organized into two data tables: one containing information about the individuals who were the main subjects of each sheet, and one containing information about children listed on those sheets. Because individuals appear several times, data for the same person frequently appears in both tables and in more than one row in each table. For example, a woman who lived all her life in Middlesex and married once would have two rows in the children's table -- one for her appearance on her mother's sheet and one for her appearance on her father's sheet -- and two rows in the individual table -- one for the sheet with her maiden name and one for the sheet with her married name. After entry, records were linked in order to associate all appearances of the same individual and to associate individuals with spouses, parents, children, siblings, and other relatives. Sheets with minimal information were not included in the dataset. The data includes information on 6586 unique individuals. There are 4893 observations in the individual file, and 7552 in the kids file.