Hampshire County, Virginia, was the first county wholly in the territory that is now West Virginia. The documents contained in this carefully compiled work are therefore the earliest records of West Virginia. They consist of alphabetically arranged abstracts of: (1) deeds, mortgages, leases, and other instruments from the 1760s to 1800; (2) state censuses of Hampshire County, 1782 and 1784; (3) Revolutionary pensioners in Hampshire County, 1835; (4) marriage bonds, 1824-28; (5) wills from the 1770s to the 1860s; and (6) early estate records. The index contains 11,000 entries, with women listed under both maiden name and married name where known.