In Tidewater Virginia, as in Rockingham County, some county clerks hid
their records for safekeeping, and some sent their records to Richmond
for safekeeping. The ones sent to Richmond were placed in the safe new
state courthouse at the southeast corner of Capitol Square.

The state courthouse burned in April 1865 in the fire that Richmond
authorities and Confederates set with an intention of destroying
supplies and valuable cotton and tobacco in the city's warehouses. That
fire also destroyed almost all of the judicial records of the colonial
and commonwealth appellate courts from the 1610s through the middle of
the 1860s. It was the one worst disaster to befall the archival records
of Virginia at any time, and it was the result of an unanticipated
spreading of a fire that Virginians set. 

Brent Tarter
The Library of Virginia
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