An index to Johnston County wills has been created for wills from 1760 through 1922 that are physically located at the North Carolilna Archives. Additional wills can be found on microfilm at the Archives.

Several months ago, the National Park Service (NPS) launched their new and improved Soldiers and Sailors Database which catalogued information on over 190,000 North Carolina soldiers (Union and Confederate) who fought in the Civil War, and almost 1000 African American sailors who were born in North Carolina and fought for the Union. Using their "Download Spreadsheet" option, we were able to create a Civil War Soldiers Index and a Civil War Sailors Index which link back to the NPS Soldiers and Sailors Database.

With this new content, we also updated our "Name Index" to include Johnston County wills, NC Civil War soldiers, NC Civil War sailors and NC yearbooks from the NCGenWeb NC Yearbook Project.

We hope you find these new resources of great value!

To begin, type in a first (or middle) name and last name in the "Name Index" form which is found on every page of JohnstonCountyGenealogy.org in the right-hand panel. After clicking the "Search Name Index" button, numerous blocks of information will appear with matching names within each block. When you want to see more, just click on the magnifying glass to view the original source information with expanded content.

We have included every census year except 1850 and 1940, cemetery gravesites through the late 1900's, surname researcher links and other resources. Additional content will be added as time permits.

First of all, I reviewed the various sources of data that was available and found that every one of them was incomplete in one way or the other. Both the downloadable 2010 census data and the Johnston County GIS website knew the location of hundreds of cemeteries, but didn’t know the name of the cemetery (in most cases) or who was buried there.

FindAGrave.com and Interment.com had names, addresses and sometimes latitude/longitude but they were not always correct. Some of the individuals who submit information to these websites just create “virtual” cemeteries without actually visiting the gravesites, which resulted in locations that were actually guesses.

The USGenWeb Archives website usually had names, addresses and directions to the cemetery but no latitude or longitude, and only a few cemetery listings. Likewise, the Johnston County Genealogy & Historical Society (JCGHS) had names, addresses and (often times poor) directions using state road numbers, but no latitude or longitude.

So… using a PDF township map, a series of county maps (taped together) with state road numbers, Google online aerial & “streetview” maps, Bing online aerial & “birds eye” maps, and the online Johnston County GIS interface, I got to work.

The first task was tying together the data from various sources so I would know which FindAGrave.com cemetery listing was related to which Interment.com listing. Likewise, I had to tie the USGenWeb Archive listings and JCGHS listings to the others. By comparing the names of the interred in each cemetery, I was able to establish relationships and capture them in a database within a few weeks.

While I was pursuing this task, I also identified other items such as the condition of the cemetery, the type of perimeter (e.g. - chain link) that was used, the earliest birth and death, and the last names of those in the cemetery. That added a few more weeks.

Next was the hard part…

Using the maps indicated above, I began my quest of identifying the latitude and longitude of cemeteries based on descriptions from various sources. Often times they conflicted, or were just poorly written such as “on SR 1143 in a field” (SR 1143 is twelve miles long) or “behind old James W Young home.”

If I was reasonably sure that I found the cemetery, I captured the latitude & longitude. If I was only somewhat convinced that I found the right cemetery, I included the words “Suspected” out beside the latitude/longitude. In those cases where I was in the neighborhood but couldn’t identify the cemetery location, I entered the words “Approximately”.

After spending hundreds of hours on evenings and weekends trying to locate cemeteries (and going to a few in the process), I decided that it’s time to share my research. I’ve located 609 cemetery locations out of 1119 cemetery listings in the Johnston County area, and still have about 300 more to review. There is some duplication which I need to address, and I will be creating a way for users to report incorrect information.

Whew… I’m tired.

http://www.johnstoncountygenealogy.org/resources/cemeteries.asp

Complicating the process, pages 224-248 were reversed before the page numbers were assigned which caused some difficulty in validating the data based on page totals. Also, no page was designated as "223". Furthermore, the pages appeared to be ripped out of it's original binding which caused some of the numeric data to be lost. Reconstruction of the data was accomplished by utilizing the column totals at the bottom of each page.

Not only were the names of each individual closely analyzed, but comparisons were also made to other 1810 census transcriptions for Johnston County to insure the most accurate results. While we feel confident that ours is the most best transcription, the name variations from others are also included.

The format in which this census is displayed on our website is very user friendly. You can filter by surname or page number, and you can mouseover an item to see more information. Just hover your mouse over the question mark symbol (?) to view the name variations suggested by others, or the exclamation symbol (!) to view additional comments by the transcriptionists. You can even hover over the numbers in each column to identify which heading they appear under.

Now it's time to transcribe the 1820 Census...

• Early marriage records of Wayne and Johnston counties, North Carolina, Vol. 1
• Johnston county: economic and social
• Stephen Taylor and descendants, Johnston and Anson Counties, North Carolina and westward 1750's - 1996

Published in 1922, Johnston county: economic and social provides interesting background information on the formation of Johnston County and its townships. Who would have thought that the town of Micro would have previously been named "Jerome" for one of its prominent citizens (Jerome Creech). If you're looking for longstanding names from Johnston County, you'll want to check this out.

• Campbell University
• Davidson College
• Duke University
• East Carolina University
• Elizabeth City State University
• Elon College
• Guilford College
• Louisburg College
• Meredith College
• NC Central University
• NC State University
• UNC-Chapel Hill
• UNC-Greensboro

Take it for a test ride and look up April 8, 1754 when Johnston County was repealed by King George II along with several other counties. It was recreated in September 1756.

Not only were the names of each individual closely analyzed, but comparisons were also made to other 1800 census transcriptions for Johnston County to insure the most accurate results. While we feel confident that ours is the most best transcription, the name variations from others are also included.

The format in which this census is displayed on our website is very user friendly. You can filter by surname or page number, and you can mouseover an item to see more information. Just hover your mouse over the question mark symbol (?) to view the name variations suggested by others, or the exclamation symbol (!) to view additional comments by the transcriptionists. You can even hover over the numbers in each column to identify which heading they appear under.

Efforts to transcribe the 1810 Census are underway...