Tyrees listed by Early American County

TYREE FAMILY LISTS begin to coalesce - organized by development time of county.

This Tyree Genealogy has been written by many Tyrees. Through the years, family members have made lists and left writings of what they knew of their families. Throughout this writing, some of these contributors have been identified in capital letters. The current writing was accepted, accessed and recopied from these and augmented by the impersonal data found in wills, deeds, marriage records, etc. by Elinor Tyree Thus the mistakes are hers. Those subjects closest to the family of the compiler have been most deligently proven.

It is hoped that the writing will not only help a new generation of Tyrees in their searches, but will stimulate them to find and expose the errors that still lurk herein and lead them to write their own much enlarged version of TYREE.

The material below is organized geographically, according to the development time of the counties and states to which the Tyrees seem to have been attracted. A knowledge of where the sought for ancestor lived is absolutely necessary to follow the listings. Indexing by names produced so many repetitions, it was useless.

The counties were an effort to better control the land ownership boundaries which became overwhelming early on; in 1634 Virginia established the English County System to handle the problem. Each county had its court house site where there would be a recording court house, jail, and sometimes a church (thus, Charles City County Court House even today); though most of these became the nuclei of future towns.

Elinor F. Tyree
TexasET@aol.com

[Site manager's note: A more current version of this section (in the form of a single, 200-page, password-protected, read-only MicroSoft Word document) can be downloaded by FTP (file transfer protocol) from Tom Tyree's web page.]
THE EASTERN SEABOARD COUNTIES (Virginia's first 8 counties) - these family lists are in scattered groupings, not only because of the early times, but because the areas suffered burnings through the passing years and wars in which records were destroyed (Va. Census of 1790 destroyed when the British burned Washington in the War of 1812; also the Virginia Census of 1800 was lost; etc.).

The Eastern Seaboard Counties plus New Kent County
     James City County
     York County
     Charles City County
     Henrico County
     Isle of Wight
     Elizabeth City County
     Warwick County (no Tyree data)
     Accomack County
     New Kent County
THE FIRST WEST - just up the James River but above the fall line. The fall line is at Richmond for the James, at Fredericksburg for the Rappahannock, at Washington D.C. for the Potomac. This drop (or rise if one is going upstream) made the River impassible to convenient boat travel. The westward journey was only for the more hardy overland trekkers. But their numbers grew rapidly. To accommodate their record keeping, new counties were constantly being formed in the rather limitless West of the original counties. Thus it is possible for a man's name to move from county list to county list while the man lived his whole life in one spot.

The first gathering of merchants and markets began to form at the Falls of the James River. A county was hastily marked off and named (now "Old") Rappahannock; but it did not serve the purposes of the burgeoning town and was abolished in 1692 when Richmond became independent as its own record keeper. The counties, however, continue to best supply information on Tyree farmers.

JAMES CITY COUNTY and YORK were pretty well blocked off from any open West by other counties.

ACCOMACK and NORTHAMPTON Counties, on the offshore peninsula, were water locked.

NEW KENT COUNTY spawned KING AND QUEEN COUNTY in 1691 which in turn spawned KING WILLIAM IN 1701 and also SPOTSYLVANIA 1720. KING WILLIAM spawned CAROLINE in 1727 and SPOTSYLVANIA spawned ORANGE IN 1734. But back to NEW KENT -- it also spawned HANOVER IN 1720 which in turn spawned LOUISA IN 1742.

The First West
     New Kent County becomes ...
          Hanover County
          Spotsylvania County  
          Caroline County
          Dunmore County
     Charles City County becomes ...
          Amelia County
          Prince Edward County
THE COMMERCIAL WEST -- profitable tobacco fields opened on up the James River when the River began to be used for shipping a crop (using flat bottomed boats, with the placement of locks, and with George Washington talking about a possible canal along the north bank). No longer were settlers confined to subsistence farming; there was the promise of cash.

The huge COUNTY OF HENRICO provided the land; it allowed its great western expanse to become GOOCHLAND COUNTY in 1727. Goochland sliced off its still great west to ALBEMARLE in 1744 and reduced its still bloated size by cutting off CUMBERLAND in 1748 and CHESTERFIELD in 1749.

Albemarle withdrew itself to its northern area (in the great valley) and spawned BEDFORD 1753 to the south of the James River; and to the north of the James River it spawned BUCKINGHAM 1758 and AMHERST 1761. The first great activity followed the northern bank of the James where Amherst had to spawn the COUNTY OF NELSON in 1807; however activity on the southern bank was never far behind -- Bedford had spawned CAMPBELL COUNTY in 1781 and FRANKLIN COUNTY in 1785; and the second tobacco city-center after Richmond, Lynchburg, situated itself in Campbell County on the southern bank of the James after the 1800's.

Also we can't overlook the peripheries where Cumberland County spawned POWHATAN in 1777; Albemarle spawned FLUVANIA in 1777 and BUCKINGHAM spawned APPOMATTOX in 1845 (this is getting ridiculously complex).

The Commercial West
     Henrico County breaks to form ...
          Albemarle County
          Cumberland County
          Powhatan County
          Appomattox County
          Franklin County from Bedford
          Amherst County to Nelson
          Campbell County
     Isle of Wight County forms
          Pittsylvania County

Pushing on toward the mountain West
     Augusta County
     Rockbridge County  
     Bath County  
     Allegheny County
     Greenbrier County
     Randolph County
     Monroe, Fayette, Raleigh Counties
     Kanawha County
     Mercer County
     Jackson County
     Putnam County

North Carolina

North Carolina into Tennessee

Tennessee   
     Davidson County
     Dekalb county
     Gibson County
     Giles County
     Hamilton County
     Haywood County
     Marshall County
     Maury County
     Shelby County
     Smith County
     Stewart County
     Sumner County
     Tipton County
     Wayne County
     Williamson County
     General Tennessee

Kentucky
     Ballard County
     Boyde County
     Bracken County
     Clark County
     Clay County
     Estill County
     Fayette County
     Floyd County
     Garrard County
     Graves County
     Greenup County
     Hardin County
     Lawrence County
     Letcher County
     Lincoln County
     Madison County
     Marshall County
     Mercer County
     Metcalf County
     Rockcastle County
     Scott County
     Shelby County
     Trimble County 

Beyond the parent states
      Arkansas from Missouri
      Arkansas' Hempstead County
      Arkansas' Dallas County
      Arkansas' Saline County
      Arkansas' Washington county
      Arkansas' St. Francis County

Missouri
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