Norfolk (Va.) Department of Health

Norfolk was located in Norfolk County, which is now extinct. The city took the name from the former home of an early settler, Adam Thoroughgood, who was a native of the county of Norfolk in England. Norfolk was established in 1680 by an act of assembly. It was incorporated as a town in 1736 and as a city in 1845.

Laws requiring the recording of births and deaths in Virginia were enacted as early as 1632, when a law directed ministers or churchwardens in each parish to present a "register of all burialls, christenings, and marriages" yearly at the June meeting of the court. A similar act passed in 1659 stated that "enquiries are often made for persons imported into the collonie, of whose death no positive certificate can be granted for want of registers." Few records survive from these early decades.

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