"This work is an attempt to put in one place the available Virginia census readings for the various PAGE families who lived in that State from 1790 to 1850. However, because of the destruction of the records of a few of the counties, this cannot be called a complete record."--Preface.
The Reverend William Douglas served both St. James Northam Parish (Dover Church) in Goochland County and in Manakin Town which was part of King William Parish. King William Parish was in Goochland County during this time period but is now in Powhatan County because of county boundary changes.
The book rings with the names of early inhabitants and prominent citizens. For the genealogist there is the important and wholly fortuitous list of tithables of Pittsylvania County for the year 1767, which enumerates the names of nearly 1,000 landowners and property holders, amounting in sum to a rough census of the county in its infancy. Additional lists include the names, some with inclusive dates of service, of sheriffs, justices of the peace, members of the House of Delegates, 1776-1928, members of the Senate of Virginia, 1776-1928, clerks of the court, and judges.
This scarce work is an alphabetically arranged listing of 18th-century inhabitants of Litchfield compiled from town records of birth, marriage, death, probate, and so on. While the descriptions vary from one person to the next, for most of the roughly 1,500 Litchfield pioneers listed here we are given the pioneer's place of birth or origin, names of siblings, date of death, name of spouse(s), date of marriage, and names, with dates of birth, of all children. Appended to the lineages is a useful table of all the buildings standing in Litchfield in the year of the book's original publication, 1849, with the names of their builders and occupants. Following is a list of the principal families covered by Mr. Woodruff: Adams, Addis, Agard, Allen, Ames, Atwater, Bacon, Baldwin, Barnard, Barns, Bassett, Bates, Blackman, Blake, Bradley, Beech, Beebe, Beecher, Beers, Benton, Beuon, Bidwell, Bird, Birge, Bishop, Bissell, Bristol, Boardman, Bolles, Brooker, Buck, Buell, Bull, Burgess, Butler, Camp, Case, Catlin, Champion, Clark, Cramton, Cleaver, Clemons, Coe, Collins, Collier, Cook Crosby, Churchill, Culver, Curtiss, Deming, Denison, Dickinson, Douglass, Dudlee, Durkee, Dutton, Emmons, Emons, Ensign, Fairbanks, Farnam, Frisbie, Ford, Frost, Gallop, Garnsey, Garritt, Gates, Gay, Grannis, Grant, Graves, Gibbs, Gilbert, Gillett, Griswold, Goodwin, Gould, Gunn, Hall, Harris, Harrison, Hart, Haskin, Hebbard, Holmes, Hopkins, Horsford, Humaston, Huntington, Jenkins, Johnson, Jones, Knapp, Kellogg, Kelsey, Kilborn, Kirby, Landon, Lee, Lewis, Linsley, Little, Lord, Lyman, McNeil, Mansfield, Marsh, Mason, Merriman, Minor, Moore, Morris, Moss, Moulthrop, Munger, Murray, Olmsted, Orton, Osborn, Palmer, Parker, Parmelee, Parsons, Plant, Peck, Pierpont, Phelps, Preston, Potter, Plumb, Reeve, Rogers, Ross, Rossiter, Russell, Sanford, Stanley, Starr, Seely, Seymour, Sheldon, Shephard, Smedley, Spencer, Steward, Smith, Stoddard, Stone, Strong, Taylor, Tracy, Thomson, Throop, Turner, Tryon, Vail, Wadsworth, Wallace, Ward, Waugh, Way, Webster, Welsh, Westover, Wetmore, Wittlesley, Wright, Wolcott, Woodruff, and Wooster.