Welcome to Surry County, NCGenWeb



About the USGenWeb Project


HELLO - WELCOME!

My name is LaRae Halsey-Brooks, and my daughter,
Eireann Brooks, and I are the County Co-Coordinators
for the Surry County NCGenWeb Project.

***We are moving this website to a new location for the time being. 
Please note that the move will be done in stages
and some pages will be unavailable until it is completed.*** 

If you would like to contribute Biographical Sketches of your 
Surry County families to this website, please let us know. 
We will be happy to create a special page for your material 
and include any photographs, scanned documents, 
or other items you'd like to add to the page.

We also would like a list of your Surry County Surnames
with dates and townships. We'll include a link back 
so others researching your families can contact you. 
I'll start the page with my own families, but hope you will
each add your own surnames to the new page.

If you live in or near Surry County and would like to 
take digital photographs of cemeteries and tombstones, 
please let us know. 

If you have access to existing cemetery transcriptions, 
land records, tax rolls, school class rosters/photos, etc., 
we would be most grateful for any and all submissions.

If you are interested in hosting another county
in North Carolina for the NCGenWeb Project,
please visit the Adoptable Counties page.

Please check back from time to time
as we add more information to the page!

Thank you!
LaRae & Eireann


About Surry County

Surry County was named for Lord Surrey, prominent member of Parliament who protested the burdensome taxes placed on the colonies.  The county was formed from Rowan County in 1770 (approved by legislation in 1771).  Rowan was formed from Anson in 1753 and Anson was formed from Bladen in 1750.
 
Surry's first county seat was Richmond, now Old Town, in present-day Forsyth County.  The land for this seat of justice was donated by Martin Armstrong and William Sheppard.
 
In 1779 Wilkes County was formed from Surry.  Ten years later, Stokes County was formed from Surry's eastern border.  In 1790 it was deemed necessary to have the seat of justice in the center of the county, and Rockford was chosen.  The name Rockford came from the White Rock Ford on the Yadkin River.  The land for this county seat was deeded by Thomas and Moses Ayers.
 
By 1850 the populace again asked for a county division.  This time Yadkin County was formed from that part of Surry south of the Yadkin River.  This required a new seat of justice for Surry.  Frances and Charles Shober, heirs of Gottlieb Shober of Salem, donated sixty acres in the center of the county.  The new county seat was named Dobson for William Polk Dobson, one of Surry's most prominent citizens.
 
Surry County is bounded on the north by Carroll County in the Commonwealth of Virginia, on the east by Stokes County, on the west by Wilkes and Alleghany Counties, and on the south by Yadkin County.  It is 538 square miles in area and has 342,300 acres of land.
 
According to Fred Patterson, Surry County Soil Conservationist (1983), the county has two well defined physiographic areas within its borders -- the Piedmont and the Blue Ridge Mountains.  The Piedmont area is the largest, covering about 85 percent of the county.  This plateau is a broad, long plateau sloping to the southeast.
 
Elevation averages more than 1,000 feet above sea level.  Elevation of several towns are Mount Airy 1,048 feet; Dobson 1,265; and Elkin 873 feet.  The lowest elevation is 800 feet, in the southeast corner where the Yadkin River leaves the county.
 
The highest elevation is located in the Blue Ridge Mountains in the Northwestern section of the county.  There Fisher's Peak is 3,609 feet above sea level.

Source:  The Heritage of Surry County, North Carolina,
Volume I - 1983 [Editor's Foreword]


North Carolina Yearbook Index
for Surry County

Mount Airy, Surry County, NC -
A General Directory, 1913-1914

NCGenWeb Project
NCGenWeb County Pages
NCGenWeb Clickable County Map

To post your Queries, Biographies, Bible Records, Deeds, Obituaries, Pensions, and Wills,
please visit the Ancestry Message Board
for Surry County, North Carolina.


Surry County Message Board


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Surry County Co-Coordinators:
LaRae Halsey-Brooks & Eireann Brooks

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This page was last updated April 12, 2021.

� 1997-2021 by the Surry County Coordinator
for the NCGenWeb Project