Elizabeth City County (Va.) Judgments, 1779-1951

Access and use

Location of collection:
Library of Virginia
The Library of Virginia
800 East Broad Street
Richmond, VA 23219
Contact for questions and access:
POC: Archives Reference Services
Phone: (804) 692-3888
Restrictions:

There are no restrictions.

Terms of access:

There are no restrictions.

Preferred citation:

Elizabeth City County (Va.) Judgments, 1779-1951. [insert series or volume title]. Local government records collection, Hampton/Elizabeth City County Court Records. The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.

Summary

Extent:
10 cubic feet (21 boxes)
Creator:
Hampton (Va.) Circuit Court
Language:
English
Preferred citation:

Elizabeth City County (Va.) Judgments, 1779-1951. [insert series or volume title]. Local government records collection, Hampton/Elizabeth City County Court Records. The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.

Background

Scope and content:

Elizabeth City County (Va.) Judgments, 1779-1951, contain civil cases in which justice was administered on the strictly formulated rules of common law. The majority of cases in this record series relate to matters of debt. The collection also contains cases concerning the taking of land by the Buckroe, Phoebus, and Hampton Railroad Company in 1896 for an electric railroad, and by the White Land Company in 1914. These records consist of both processed and unprocessed loose records.

Biographical / historical:

Context for Record Type: Judgments are identified as civil suits, often involving debt, heard by a jury on the "law" side of the court as opposed to the "chancery" (or equity) side. Should the defendant not have funds to repay the debt, the court ordered their property (including enslaved people) to be seized and sold to repay the debt owed to the plaintiff. Judgments also contain suits brought by enslaved people seeking to gain their freedom.

In Judgments, an assumpsit or declaration (sometimes referred to as a narratio) lays out the plaintiff's grievance as a petition acted as a formal application to the court requesting judicial action. Judgment suits also generally included record types like subpoenas, summons, and exhibit. Judgments may also include additional documentations such as executions, bonds, and various kinds of writs.

Judgment suits make up a large quantity of a locality's records; consequently, they provide a great deal of information concerning the activities and interests of the people who lived in the locality. Since the vast majority of judgment suits relate to financial matters, they are a valuable resource in studying the economic and social history of Virginia localities and are the impotence for many chancery suits.

Locality History: Elizabeth City County (extinct) was named for Elizabeth, daughter of James I, and was one of the eight shires established in 1634. It became extinct in 1952, when it was incorporated into the city of Hampton, which was the county seat.

Lost Locality Note: Records were burned or destroyed during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. Additional records were burned in Richmond on 3 April 1865, where they had been moved for safekeeping during the Civil War. A few pre-Civil War volumes such as deed books, will books, and order books exist.

Additional Judgment Types

Condemnations are judgments concerning the taking of private property for public use through the power of eminent domain. Most cases involve railroad or canal companies and contain maps/plats of the land in question.

Acquisition information:
These items came to the Library of Virginia in shipments of court papers from the city of Hampton/Elizabeth City County in an undated accession.
Processing information:

Prior to 2026, the judgement descriptive records were not standardized in their inclusion of contextual information or content lists. Local Records staff reviewed this record and have updated to current standards as of 2026.

Encoded by C. OBrion: 2013; updated by J. Taylor: August 2026

Arrangement:

This collection is arranged into two series:

  • Series I: Judgments, 1779-1929
  • Series II: Unprocessed Judgments, 1875-1951

Physical location:
Library of Virginia