Clare: CHARLES BLAIR TAVENNER COLLECTION FAMILY RECORDS Introduction by Charles Blair Tavenner This catalog of individuals who lived in Loudoun County, Virginia is intended to facilitate genealogical and historic investigations. It is the product of over 40 years of intermittent research, yet it is by no means complete. More than 75,000 individuals are listed. The guiding principle has been to list all known white adults who lived in the county at some time before 1900. There are many exceptions, however, to this Standard. It would exclude persons born after 1900, also those born before 1900 who died before becoming 21 years old, yet many in each category are included, either for convenience or because of uncertainty as to dates of birth or death. Too, a smaller number of individuals who never lived in Loudoun are listed, chiefly because of their association with Loudoun people or, occasionally, ownership of Loudoun land. Gerald James Notes on Tavenner from many sources: Mr. Tavenner was a Loudoun County historian and genealogist. He spent years in the Loudoun County Courthouse and while he was researching, he started to see the same names frequently mentioned. He then started to compile an organized composite of family relationships. The collection consists of notebooks where he has written information about most Loudoun families. The data was taken from deeds, wills, and marriages as well as word of mouth. I looked at this collection at the University of VA and they are truly a work of art. The notebook pages are very small, about 3" x 6" as I recall. It is interesting to see that his notes were written in several different colors of ink with some pencil notations which accounts for them being hard to copy. He had very small handwriting and used many abbreviations, which are often hard to interpret. Some of the pages are faint because the originals were on onion skin paper. Also, nearly all of the "T" family data is missing, including all the Tavenner material. His wife left his original notebooks to the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA (not to the Library of VA in Richmond.) However, the Thomas Balch Library, Leesburg, VA has a copy of them but it is very light and at times hard to read. I do know that if you write to the Library and request a SURNAME search of Tavenner's papers, they will send you what they have. They are in alphabetical order and have only a page or two for each surname. It gives dates and relationships as they relate to that family name, and found in the court documents of Loudoun County Courthouse records. The library has copied pages for people but only if it is a name with two or three pages. The more common Loudoun surnames such as Nichols or James can run to twenty pages and they cannot copy those for patrons. I understand that volunteers do this copy work and a small donation to the Library might be in order. Gerald James Dallas, TX ----- Original Message ----- From: <Tiafind@aol.com> To: <VALOUDOU-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2002 8:34 PM Subject: [VALOUDOU-L] Re: VALOUDOU-D Digest V02 #141 > Would someone tell me what The Charles Blair Tavener Collection is and what > kinds of information it contains. Family names? Does it include the name > surname Clare?. thanks Clare > > > ==== VALOUDOU Mailing List ==== > Have you posted your Loudoun Co. surnames lately? > New members are joining our mailing list every day. > Be sure to periodically remind us of your Loudoun research interests. > >