This scarce work is an alphabetically arranged listing of 18th-century inhabitants of Litchfield compiled from town records of birth, marriage, death, probate, and so on. While the descriptions vary from one person to the next, for most of the roughly 1,500 Litchfield pioneers listed here we are given the pioneer's place of birth or origin, names of siblings, date of death, name of spouse(s), date of marriage, and names, with dates of birth, of all children. Appended to the lineages is a useful table of all the buildings standing in Litchfield in the year of the book's original publication, 1849, with the names of their builders and occupants. Following is a list of the principal families covered by Mr. Woodruff: Adams, Addis, Agard, Allen, Ames, Atwater, Bacon, Baldwin, Barnard, Barns, Bassett, Bates, Blackman, Blake, Bradley, Beech, Beebe, Beecher, Beers, Benton, Beuon, Bidwell, Bird, Birge, Bishop, Bissell, Bristol, Boardman, Bolles, Brooker, Buck, Buell, Bull, Burgess, Butler, Camp, Case, Catlin, Champion, Clark, Cramton, Cleaver, Clemons, Coe, Collins, Collier, Cook Crosby, Churchill, Culver, Curtiss, Deming, Denison, Dickinson, Douglass, Dudlee, Durkee, Dutton, Emmons, Emons, Ensign, Fairbanks, Farnam, Frisbie, Ford, Frost, Gallop, Garnsey, Garritt, Gates, Gay, Grannis, Grant, Graves, Gibbs, Gilbert, Gillett, Griswold, Goodwin, Gould, Gunn, Hall, Harris, Harrison, Hart, Haskin, Hebbard, Holmes, Hopkins, Horsford, Humaston, Huntington, Jenkins, Johnson, Jones, Knapp, Kellogg, Kelsey, Kilborn, Kirby, Landon, Lee, Lewis, Linsley, Little, Lord, Lyman, McNeil, Mansfield, Marsh, Mason, Merriman, Minor, Moore, Morris, Moss, Moulthrop, Munger, Murray, Olmsted, Orton, Osborn, Palmer, Parker, Parmelee, Parsons, Plant, Peck, Pierpont, Phelps, Preston, Potter, Plumb, Reeve, Rogers, Ross, Rossiter, Russell, Sanford, Stanley, Starr, Seely, Seymour, Sheldon, Shephard, Smedley, Spencer, Steward, Smith, Stoddard, Stone, Strong, Taylor, Tracy, Thomson, Throop, Turner, Tryon, Vail, Wadsworth, Wallace, Ward, Waugh, Way, Webster, Welsh, Westover, Wetmore, Wittlesley, Wright, Wolcott, Woodruff, and Wooster.

Index of all items recorded in will books created by a Virginia county or city during the period 1800-1865. Compiled from microfilm records in the Library of Virginia, and organized by geographic region.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1881.

The original records on file in Isle of Wight County and abstracted in this work are: Wills and Administrations Book A (1641-1650); Will and Deed Books 1 and 2 (1658-1659, 1666-1719); Will Books 3-11 (1726-1800); Deed Book I (1691-1695); Administrations and Probates (1666-1701); and The Great Book (1719-1729). In addition to the names of the testators and legatees, the entries provide the names of executors, securities, and witnesses and frequently include assignments of property.