Research and Records
Early 1900’s view of Main Street, Appomattox, looking East
Appomattox County, Virginia, was established in 1845 from parts of Buckingham County, Campbell County, Charlotte County and Prince Edward County.
Petitions to form the new county were presented to the Viginia Lesgislature beginning in 1825 and continuing until the County was established on May 1, 1845. (View the Full text of the Act of the Virginia Legislature )
The Town of Appomattox was formed on June 2, 1925. The Town Charter was recorded in the County Clerk’s Office, Law Order Book No. 3, pages 19-25. (View the full text of the Appomattox Town Charter )
As of August 22, 2016 we have begun the task of adding detailed historical information pertaining to Appomattox County to our website for anyone to use in their
personal research. Our library and genealogy center is now open to the public for anyone able to visit us at our Old Jail Museum building. Over time we will be adding new information as well as updating
existing information, so check back with us often if you are searching for family members that were in our county.
Also, feel free to drop us a note at apx.oldjail@gmail.com with any feedback or suggestions you may have. We are doing this for you and would appreciate any input on how we can better serve your needs.
Please do have patience with us though as we have only a small volunteer staff working on this project.
Appomattox County Geneology
Our Research and Publications Committee is very active and working hard to compile information that is useful to those people who are researching families that were in Appomattox County.
Our long-term goal is to identify as many individuals as possible who were in our county for at least some portion of their lives where there is some form of documentation of their existence.
Beyond just identifying the people, we are attempting to establish family relationships and build family trees that connect family members and show the evolution of families through their
respective generations. As one might imagine, this is a slow and time-consuming process.
Photo of first courthouse taken shorty after 1892 fire
Our early founding members began this research in the 1970’s and compiled a substantial amount of information. Of course, at that time, they were working with typewriters and no internet.
We have a number of books that they compiled that we had been selling both at our facilities and on our website. As our research takes us into new areas, we are discovering many errors and
omissions in the original publications. For that reason, we have taken our publications off sale while we perform complete updates. Part of this process has included creating “databases” that
we can place on our website for all to use.
Appomattox County was formed in 1845. Unfortunately, we are considered one of Virginia’s “burned counties” as our courthouse burned in 1892. Most of the records contained in the Clerk’s Office were
destroyed in that fire. For that reason, our first focus has been to reconstruct the “burned years” using information available from other sources.
Following the link below, you can access our online databases. Each will open in a new window in your browser so that you can easily return to the main database page or any other database
you were viewing. Please note that we are constantly updating these databases as new information is found on individuals. Feel free to use this information for your personal use in
researching your family. Come back often to check for updates and new databases.