Many King William County Court records were destroyed by fire on January 17, 1885. Only 19 books from the county’s founding in 1702 until the 1885 fire survived. These books remained in storage at the clerk’s office for about 130 years and then were carefully photographed by the Historical Society.

The current job is to transcribe the nearly 9,000 pages that survived and eventually provide “key word” searching capability.

Key Word Searchable Transcription Examples from Book 3




