I am posting the will of Goodwyn Taylor, married to Amy Malone. I see a lot of misinformation out there about this family, and these early Taylors. I love chanceries, because they specifically spell out relationships, under oath. It is one place a woman's maiden name is found, as well as family relationships before the 1850 Census. Chanceries can be a bit tedious with pages of who paid whom, to get their accounts in order. But where there is important genealogical information written, I do plan to start scanning and posting a paragraph here and there, of these chancery pieces. Wills are nice because they list the children or heirs. But chanceries give even more detail, sometimes list a spouse, or a marriage date, or a death date. Several Virginia counties are digitized online, through the Library of Virginia website. Mecklenburg is not digitized yet, you still need to visit the archives. The index is visible online though.

Goodwyn Taylor married Amy Malone (daughter of Drury Malone and Martha Jones). These families, as were the really early times (pre-Revolution days) for my families, were from Surry, Virginia. Goodwyn and Amy had 9 children:

1) Polly Jones Taylor, married James Watson
2) Sarah Taylor, married Abel Dortch
3) Susanna Taylor, married Thomas Watson
4) Elizabeth "Betsy" Taylor, married David Dortch
5) Nancy Taylor, married John Cleaton
6) Martha Taylor, married John Cleaton
7) Goodwyn Taylor Jr., married an Elizabeth___?___
8) John Taylor married ? unknown, & had a son named John Taylor
9) Penelope Taylor married Herbert Cook

will pg 1

These families are in a few chanceries I have, usually for not being able to pay their debts. This Abel Dortch and David Dortch (above) are the older brothers of my ancestor Newman Dortch, married to Sally Speed. This will is dated 23 Jan 1786. Proven in court 9 Oct 1786. Click to view full screen.

will pg 2

will pg 3

A note about familysearch and Virginia records

Familysearch now has 2.34 billion indexed records available, of course for free! About a million records are added to family search every month. All free, because it is all volunteers, wanting to make records accessible. This is a 3 minute video explaining how a project took place between a historical society and familysearch. I wanted to post it, because I like to see the "behind the scenes" part of how I can get access to digitized records, and this shows a little of that.The lady in the video also gives some good info on how familysearch wiki can help you in your research. The more historical societies and churches that work with familysearch, the more accessible the records become. The more volunteers indexing and digitizing, the more quickly and accessible the records will become available to everyone.

There are millions of records world wide being uploaded monthly in many languages from around the world. Here is a link to the Mecklenburg, Virginia wiki page:
https://wiki.familysearch.org/en/Mecklenburg_County,_Virginia

Here is a screen shot of the Virginia record collections today, 12 Oct 2011, not counting any Census records. Click on image to view full screen. If you see the word "browse images", that means it is not indexed yet, it is being digitized right now, at the earlier indexing phase. If you click on each entry, you get the full description and sourcing information. I just clicked on Virginia, Winchester, Evening Star Obituaries, 1899-1909. The description said: "Obituaries from the Winchester Evening Star arranged by year then alphabetically by name. Includes the years 1899-1909." Source info also given. You can compare the number of records in the collection to the number of posted completed records to know if the collection is complete. The date is the last date records were posted for that collection.

Hope this information might give you some new ideas for places to try to look for your ancestors. If you can't find a record now, keep trying again, because new records are regularly added.

SB 865 Affecting VA vital records-Public Comment Deadline Oct 6th!

Update 26 Sept 2011: I'd like to thank Mr. Peter Broadbent for permission in posting his "Memorandum to the Genealogical Community" on my blog. Blogger cannot take PDF right now, so I unfortunately had to re-save it as JPEG, meaning the links do not work inside the visible Memorandum. Please note this important citation: that Mr. Peter Broadbent's Memorandum on this blog is attached with the full memo and legislative staff report at this link address that he gave me, posted (by VGS) at:

http://goo/gl/NREby 

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blog posting 25 Sep 2011:
A bill is about to go before the Virginia Legislature which will restrict records even more than they already are! Some records currently being handled by the LVA (Library of Virginia) will be taken by the VDH (Virginia Department of Health) if these new changes take place. The VDH has never been trained in how care for or archive records.

 Peter E. Broadbent, Jr., was the former VGS (Virginia Genealogical Society) President. He is also a lawyer who has explained in detail how this new law will affect genealogists in a paper called "Memorandum to the Genealogical Community". In this Memorandum, Mr. Broadbent states, "It is critical for all members of the genealogical community to file comments by October 6 with the Virginia legislative commission considering this issue."

 Mr. Broadbent also explains that the Virginia Department of Health will restrict more records, for longer time periods, sealing each record collection at least 25 years longer than current. (125 years for birth records). Also VDH restricts close family members from getting records. Senator Blevins from Chesapeake started this bill with the purpose to make records held by the Virginia Department of Health more accessible to the public, but instead the committee returned with the opposite expected results. The Virginia Genealogical Society and the Library of Virginia worked with the committee created for the bill called the Joint Health Care Study, on why Virginia records needed to be more open, including support from doctors about death certificates helping with family medical histories. They also gave the committee evidence that no legitimate identity theft or privacy issues were at stake. Instead the Joint Health Care committee came back with a report on Sept 19th to restrict records even more, the opposite of what Senator Blevins and archivists had intended. 

Mr. Broadbent's Memorandum explains in detail, 8 options and how to vote on each one to support genealogists and keeping records accessible to the public.

The following is the contact info Mr. Broadbent gives of where to send comments to: 

“     Please email comments referencing SB 865 (with your name and address) to

       sreid@jchc.virginia.gov, or fax them to 804-786-5538,

       Or mail to:                                     Joint Commission on Health Care,

P.O. Box 1322,

Richmond, VA 23218,

     To arrive by close of business on Thursday, October 6, 2011. “

“     If you are out of state, you might explain that you do research in Virginia, and that closing records will discourage travel to Virginia for research.”

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1) This is a link to the Virginia Legislation Bill tracking page, so you can see where this bill is. Right now, the site just shows the bill is sitting with this Joint Health Care Committee. No date of the vote listed. http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?111+sum+SB865

2) If you would like to read a PDF about Senator Blevan's bill, here is a link to that, as well as more detail about the specifics about the bill titled SB 865:  http://leg5.state.va.us/User_db/frmView.aspx?ViewId=1980

3) This is a web site called:  Records Preservation and Access Committee. Note: Their top story is also about Mr. Broadbent’s words: http://www.fgs.org/rpac/2011/09/24/access-to-virginia-vital-records-oct-6-deadline/ Also note on this site there is a publication about the case for open access to records.

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In conclusion, Virginia is often an example and trendsetter regarding records. 125 years of records being closed would prevent millions of American immigrants from seeing the records of their parents and grandparents. It would prevent people from knowing their roots in “the Old Country”. Record preservation and record accessibility are very, very important things to me. I normally would not put something political on my blogs. But I am making an exception this time, because we will lose access to Virginia records if we do not speak up.

My goal with this post, is to supply you with some information, so you can learn the details and come to your own conclusions.  If you feel as I do, please speak up, in the little time we have. Help do our part keep Virginia records open, accessible, and in the hands of Library of Virginia and professional archivists!

Thank you! --Julie Cabitto