The Library of Virginia's Local Records Services Branch was recently
awarded a $150,000 grant from the National Historical Publications and
Records Commission (NHPRC) to support the scanning of the Augusta County
Chancery Causes dating from 1745 to 1912.  NHPRC, the grant funding arm
of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), recognized
the national significance of the Augusta County collection and validated
the importance of and great benefits provided by LVA's ongoing digital
chancery initiative.  

Chancery causes are invaluable to family historians and those interested
in studying the history of a locality or region and its inhabitants.
Chancery causes are legal proceedings that could not be decided readily
by existing written laws. Decisions were made by a county justice or
judge, not a jury, and on the basis of fairness, or equity, in place of
the strictly formulated rules of common law.  

The Augusta County Chancery Causes are the most voluminous of any
locality in Virginia and are one of the longest and most complete
continuous collections of chancery records of any locality in the
country. They document an unusually large geographic area. For the
period 1745 to 1770, the boundaries of Augusta County encompassed most
of western Virginia and what became the states of West Virginia,
Kentucky, Illinois, and Ohio, and parts of present-day Pennsylvania as
far north as Pittsburgh. In fact, the Augusta County court held sessions
at Fort Pitt in Pittsburgh when claim to that area, known as the West
Augusta District, was in dispute. Even after the county was reduced to
roughly its present size in 1778, the Augusta County Court continued to
be the repository for chancery causes from 28 localities, which were
heard by the Staunton Superior Court of Chancery from 1801 to 1831.

When completed, the Augusta index and images will join the over 5
million chancery images from 48 localities already posted online. The
scanning portion of the Augusta project is slated to begin in February
2011. For more information on the Library of Virginia's digital chancery
records initiative, please visit the Chancery Records Index at
http://www.virginiamemory.com/collections/chancery/

For more information, contact Carl Childs, Director, Local Records
Services, Library of Virginia, at 804-6923739 or
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