Older family histories and genealogies compiled before the internet age have a lot to recommend them. One example is:
William Everett Brockman, Orange County (Va.) Families and their Marriages: A Supplement to and Including Virginia Wills and Abstracts. A Genealogy of Colonial Virginia Families with a Thousand Marriage Bonds to 1800. Minneapolis MN: Burgess Publishing Co., 1949.
Brockman is not a surname that I am currently researching (although a close friend of mine has the surname in her ancestry). The 1,000 marriage bonds does interest me. So I checked the index for the names in Orange County that I am tracing–Tandy, Crossthwaite, Rippeto, and others– and copied the entries for each of those names.
In volumes that do not quote the actual records, mention in passing of the very name you are seeking can save you endless hours of research.
This strategy works especially well for burned counties, counties formed later from the original county, and families that are constantly on the move–who may not stay put until the census enumerator comes by. Your favorite Virginia genealogy expert, Arlene Eakle http://www.arleneeakle.com
PS Older works were published when the costs were reasonable to print full transcriptions of the documents. Today, we settle for short abstracts or just a citation, because each page is counted separately and charged. Use older printed works as an index to sources which may no longer survive.