Virginia. Superintendent of Weights and Measures.

An act of the General Assembly approved March 19, 1847, provided for the preservation and use of the standard of weights and measures received under an act of Congress passed June 14, 1836. The clerk of the Council of State was appointed Superintendent of Weights and Measures.

Twenty years later, after West Virginia became a state and most of the remaining vacant land declined, efforts to abolish the Land Office surfaced. Instead, the General Assembly abolished the office of the Superintendent of Weights and Measures, by an act of February 9, 1867, and transferred duties to the Register of the Land Office.

Legislative action of March 20, 1924 decreed that the Land Office was to be abolished and it duties transferred to the Secretary of the Commonwealth when the next vacancy occurred. The Virginia Bureau of Weights and Measures was formed in 1924, under the Dept. of Agriculture and Immigration. That agency is now known as the Dept. of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

The records in this series are limited to the period when the Register of the Land Office was acting in the capacity of Superintendent of Weights and Measures, 1864-1924.