Genealogy

The Amherst County Museum & Historical Society operates a small genealogy library. It is free and open to the public by appointment during regular museum hours. For a description of the resources in the library, click here.

Research Policy

Researchers are welcome to visit our library and use any of our public resources for free.  Unfortunately staffing limitations do not allow us to take research requests over the phone.  If you would like us to do research for you, please consider purchasing one of the research packages described below.

Services:

Research Requests:

The museum volunteers offer a genealogy research service for a fee for individuals who are not able to visit the museum in person. The fee varies by the number of names that research is requested for and whether or not the requester is a Museum member.  If you are interested in this service you can print out a genealogy request form to fill out and return to the museum with the appropriate payment.

Genealogy request searches (for 1 to 3 individuals) include a search of our records, including birth (1854-1896), death (1854-1896), marriages, deed and will abstracts.  We will photograph up to 5 documents found in our records, (wills, deeds, or marriage records), at the Court House, upon request, at no additional charge.  The cost for additional copies is $2.00 per document.

Please note: Due to file sizes and limited resources we are unable to honor any requests to copy entire Family Surname Files.  We will be glad to look up any specific name (first and last name required) in any of these files and a search of these files is always included with a research package.

Fees are for the time spent searching only, not for the documents found and do not guarantee that anything will be found.

​Document Retrieval Service:

The museum volunteers offer a service to copy specific documents from the Amherst County Court House.  If you already have the necessary information, (the book and page number), you can request a document retrieval instead of a research package.  The charge for document retrieval is $10 for one document, $25 for 2 to 5 documents, and $45 for 6 to 10 documents.  Please make sure to include the type of document, (will, deed, etc.), name(s) on document, specific book designation and page number for each document in your request.  

Requests can be filled out on plain paper and mailed with the appropriate payment to: Amherst County Museum, PO Box 741, Amherst, VA, 24521

Incorrect documents retrieved do to misinformation will incur an additional charge if a return trip to the court house is necessary.

**Please allow at least 2 weeks for your request to be fulfilled.  We have one volunteer genealogy researcher and sometimes there are multiple ongoing requests.  Requests are processed on a first come first served basis.  Thank you for your patience. 

Resources Available for Purchase:

As a part of our museum gift shop, we make available several books and resources on Amherst County. Some which might be of interest to genealogists and historians are:

• Gravestone Inscriptions in Amherst County -- a detailed recording of gravestones in cemeteries across Amherst County.
• Amherst County Story -- a history of Amherst County written in 1961 by Alfred Percy.
• Amherst County Families and History -- compiled from Hardesty's atlas this contains information on Revolutionary and Civil War soldiers from Amherst County.
• From Days Gone By -- a compilation of new and reprinted articles about the Clifford area of Amherst County.
• Amherst Men in Gray -- by Robert Faught, tells the story of the Civil War units from Amherst County.
• Elijah Fletcher: Vermont Schoolmaster to Virginia Planter -- Ann Marshall Whitley reprinted this story of a Northerner's transformation into a Southern planter, originally written by Martha VonBriesen.
• Daisy Williams of Sweet Briar -- The series of Sweet Briar books ends with the life of Daisy Williams, for whom Sweet Briar College was founded.
• Ghost Stories and Mysteries of Sweet Briar -- Ann Marshall Whitley relates some of her favorite haunting tales of Sweet Briar.
• 1864 Confederate Engineers' Map of Amherst County -- This map shows many details of Amherst in 1864, including the names and locations of many prominent families. The Museum has created an index to the map

For an order form to purchase any of these resources click here.