PUBLIC "-//Library of Virginia//TEXT (US::Vi::vi02894::A Guide to the Elizabeth City County (Va.) Judgments, 1779-1951))//EN" "vi02894.xml" A Guide to the Elizabeth City County (Va.) Judgments, 1779-1951 Elizabeth City County (Va.) Judgments, 1779-1951 Catherine G. OBrion Library of Virginia © 2009 By The Library of Virginia. All Rights Reserved.

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Machine-readable finding aid derived from MARC record, created by Catherine G. OBrion, 30 January 2009 Description is in English 2013-11-21 Converted to schema conforming EAD by dtd2schema.vh.xsl. A Guide to the Elizabeth City County (Va.) Judgments, 1779-1951 A Collection in the Library of Virginia Catherine G. OBrion

Library of Virginia 2009 Library of Virginia staff Library of Virginia Descriptive Summary The Library of Virginia Elizabeth City County (Va.) Judgments, 1779-1951 Library of Virginia 10 cubic feet (21 boxes) English Hampton (Va.) Circuit Court Administrative Information Access Restrictions

There are no restrictions.

Use Restrictions

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.

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

Historical Information

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.

 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.

 Arrangement

This collection is arranged into two series: Series I: Judgments, 1779-1929 Series II: Unprocessed Judgments, 1875-1951

Adjunct Descriptive Data Related Material

Additional Elizabeth City County Court Records can be found on microfilm at The Library of Virginia web site. Consult A Guide to Virginia County and City Records on Microfilm.

Elizabeth City County is one of Virginia's Lost Records Localities. Additional Elizabeth City County may be found in the Virginia Lost Records Localities Collection at the Library of Virginia. Search the Lost Records Localities Digital Collection available at the Library of Virginia's website.

Contents List Judgments, 1779-1929 Library of Virginia 9 cubic feet (20 boxes)

These cases are organized chronologically by year then month the case was resolved.

Judgments 1779-1836 Judgments 1837-1849 Judgments 1851-1866 Judgments 1867 Judgments 1867-1875 Judgments 1876-1884 Judgments 1885-1888 Judgments 1888-1891 Judgments 1891-1892 Judgments 1893-1895 Judgments 1896 Judgments 1896 Judgments 1897-1899 Judgments 1900-1902 Judgments 1902-1904 Judgments 1905 Judgments 1906-1909 Judgments 1910-1912 Judgments 1913-1915 Judgments 1915-1929, undated Unprocessed Judgments, 1875-1951 State Records Center 1 cubic foot (1 box) Search Warrants, Habeas Corpus Papers, Civil Executions, Capias, Rules, Attachments, Fifa's Criminal Judgments, 1875-1951