This project began about fifteen years ago as a personal challenge. Could I make sense of so many records for Fosters in Amelia County?
When I first looked at Amelia County records for the Foster surname, I was quickly overwhelmed. There were so many. I had worked my Foster line back to George Foster who died in neighboring Charlotte County in 1789 and I was looking for his father. A published family history says he was the son of Robert Foster of Essex County but gives no supporting evidence. I had found no evidence in Charlotte County but noticed that several Fosters had moved to Charlotte from Amelia County. Perhaps Amelia County held evidence. George had been the only Foster in Charlotte County for many years, making him and his children easy to identify. Amelia County was not so simple. There were records for so many different Fosters. Sorting them all out was a task I was not willing to even attempt. I dropped that line of research and moved on to other family surnames.
Sometime later at a genealogical conference, I heard a speaker talk about the value of land records in genealogy. And in her presentation she mentioned that tax records were valuable for identifying men with the same name. The county clerk didn't really care which John Smith sold the land but the tax collector cared very much which John Smith had paid his taxes. This made me think about Amelia County again, with a wonderful series of colonial tithe lists. Perhaps I could sort out those Fosters after all.
I looked at every record I could find with the Foster surname. I organized them by name and put them on index cards. I put them in spread sheets to be sorted multiple ways. Finally I put each tract of land on a map and it finally made sense. I had two Georges, two Thomases, two Williams, one James and one John. I wrote up what I had found and put it on this website.
Contemplating my accomplishment, I realized that the identity of these eight men didn't mean much without context. I didn't know where they had come from or how they related to each other. Perhaps researching the second generation would be useful. Who did their children marry? Where did they go? Tracing the second generation is the focus of the current website.
While the first website focused on records, the updated site focuses on analysis. Instead of a list of records relating to each man, the updated website gives the analysis of those records, presented as birth, marriage, death and identity information. The research for the second generation isn't as complete as that for the first. But after ten years I decided it was time to share what I have gathered so far. And while the research for this project has taken so much longer than I had anticipated, it was worthwhile. Not because I found the information on George Foster of Charlotte County that I was looking for, but because of the experience it gave me in identifying men with the same name, correlating evidence from multiple records and recognizing the value of researching the whole family plus their neighbors. I hope you find something useful here. And if you can fill in the gaps, please share what you have with me.
© 2017