Clarke County, Virginia, Register of Births, 1853-1896

Clarke County has over 5,800 entries of births for slaves and free children. Entries typically include the full name of the child, race, date of birth, place of birth, given names of parents, occupation of father, county of residence, informant, and page number in the register. During the 1930s, WPA workers extracted information from the Clarke County Register of Births which they typed on small cards. Clarke County Historical Association volunteers extracted information from these cards to create an alphabetized list for research purposes. The list was compared to the microfilm copy of the original register and more births were added. Births that were bound into the Register of Deaths are also included. No birth records survive (and may never have been recorded) for the years 1862, 1863, 1869 and 1895. Because the children's names are presented in alphabetical order, they are not included in the index, which includes the names of informants who were neighbors, friends, grandparents with different surnames, but not the parents. Slave births were not indexed unless the slave child had a surname. Several locations are indexed.