Law-in-Action: The Court Records of Virginia's Eastern Shore

Abstract

EVERED from the rest of Virginia by the Chesapeake Bay and washed by the Atlantic on the east are two Virginia counties, Accomack and Northampton, commonly spoken of as the Eastern Shore of Virginia,1 and forming the southern extension of that peninsula which includes also Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Maryland. The Eastern Shore of Virginia, settled in i6I42 and one of the eight original shires, has county court records that begin in i632 and continue in unbroken sequence to the present, thereby entitling them to be called the oldest continuous county court records in the United States. Even as early as i642 these records were referred to by an attorney from London as the Court Roles of Accomack in Virginia.4 Although there are extant some valuable county court records for other sections of Virginia, fire and war have destroyed many of the seventeenth-century records as well as some of a later date. Of the twentythree counties in existence at the end of the seventeenth century, only fourteen have now any court records of that century; and of those fourteen only five have their records continuous. Of the eight original shires formed in i634, only four have seventeenth-century records, and of those