North Carolina Genealogical Society

North Carolina County Road, Bridge, Ferry, and Mill Petitions
Another Source for Genealogists

by Stewart Dunaway

During my research of the Revolutionary War in North Carolina, I was gently nudged into the North Carolina State Archives in Raleigh. There, in the county records, all of the original county petitions reside. However, they are un-indexed other than by county and era (year range). Researching Orange County seemed like a hike up Mount Everest. It quickly became apparent that I was not going to have time to read every piece of paper while searching for names and locations without many visits to the archives. Therefore, I opted to photograph the papers and read them at home at my leisure.

It didn’t take long before I realized there was a lot of information embedded in these records such as names of people residing near the roads, bridges, or mills; names of neighbors; former owners of land; creek names; distances from towns; crops grown; distance to the nearest railroad station; and the list goes on. Not every slip of paper had this type of information and very few drawings or maps were included with these petitions. Nevertheless, these records are a rich source of information for historians and especially genealogists.

The Donald Mosher Award was presented at the 2010 National Genealogical Society Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Nathan W. Murphy, MA, AG, for his paper "The Devon Seafaring Origins of William Byrd's Mother's Family: Grace (Stegge) Byrd of London, England, Thomas Segge of Westover Parish, Charles City County, Virginia, and Captain Abraham Reed of Charles City County, Virginia; Including Additional Details about His Father John Byrd's Career as a London Goldsmith."