# Names on the petitions to divide Frederick County, 1831-1836

Every name line on the Library of Virginia’s thirty files of petitions and remonstrances for and against the new counties that became Clarke and Warren, as written on the scans, with its reading grade and the side its document took.

- Dataset ID: `clarke-founding-petitions-1831-1836`
- Tier: 1 (Genealogy)
- Version: 1.0.0
- Publication date: 2026-10-17
- Records: 6,972
- License: [Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) (CC BY 4.0)
- Source of truth: https://ourclarke.com/stories/clarke-founding-1836-story/

## Coverage

- In: 6,972 name lines on 28 of the Library of Virginia's 30 files of petitions, remonstrances and papers on dividing Frederick County, 1831-1836: 5,917 signatures, 1,031 names in clerks' copies and 24 officials' signatures. They cover the petitions for the eastern county that became Clarke and for the Front Royal county that became Warren, and the remonstrances against both.
- Not in: Names on sheets that are lost. Some 130 supporters' names in a Prince William County case filed with the papers. The text of the petitions, which the founding story quotes and cites.
- Effective date: 2026-10-17

## Source

Legislative Petitions Digital Collection, Frederick County, 1831-1836 (Library of Virginia). Library of Virginia. Transcribed from the scans by Our Clarke. https://ourclarke.com/stories/clarke-founding-1836-story/

Source file SHA-256: `undefined`

Attribution: Credit the Library of Virginia's Legislative Petitions Digital Collection and the file whenever these names are reused, in addition to the Our Clarke citation.

## Files

| File | Format | Size | Rows | SHA-256 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [clarke-founding-petitions-1831-1836-2026-10-17.csv](clarke-founding-petitions-1831-1836-2026-10-17.csv) | CSV | 1,990,121 bytes | 6,972 | `b2bc98ec2c90f28563a7706bdd8cd4f521d7475ff50ebc745a93166f44088253` |
| [clarke-founding-petitions-1831-1836-2026-10-17.xlsx](clarke-founding-petitions-1831-1836-2026-10-17.xlsx) | XLSX | 716,700 bytes | 6,972 | `fdadd43a2258ae3cbb6010947f0eb291382ce09f12ce49cc1a22a851ab269986` |

Column definitions are in [schema.md](schema.md). Machine-readable metadata is in [datapackage.json](datapackage.json). Every file in this directory, with its size and SHA-256, is listed in [manifest.json](manifest.json).

## Held fields

- scan images: The scans are the Library of Virginia's; each row links its catalog record.

## Row filters

Every row passed the download boundary's two filters before it was written: rows about a person who may be living are excluded, and rows whose state is unresolved (verify, lead, ambiguous and similar) are excluded. This publication excluded 0 rows as possibly living and 0 as unresolved at that boundary.

## Reading the data

A name line is not a person. A man who signed more than one sheet appears once for each, and names in clerks' copies usually repeat signatures elsewhere.

Two lines with the same name are not thereby the same man, and a name here is not matched to any other record.

Names are as written, never corrected. A doubtful reading keeps its ? marks.

A signer did not always live in the county the document concerns: some sheets carry names from Winchester and Jefferson County.

## How to cite

Our Clarke. "Names on the petitions to divide Frederick County, 1831-1836." Dataset, version 1.0.0, published 2026-10-17. Library of Virginia. Transcribed from the scans by Our Clarke. https://ourclarke.com/data/#clarke-founding-petitions-1831-1836. License: CC BY 4.0.

## Versions

Each publication is dated in its filenames. Earlier publications are kept unchanged at https://ourclarke.com/data/snapshots/.