This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/hV.2ADE/2288.1 Message Board Post: Some references for you to check. I don't have either at hand, but they both had discussion of the local economy in the early days. Langford's book was her research and interviews; Goodspeed was assembled from paid family inserts, so is sometimes over-stated or missing something altogether. Johnson County, Arkansas, the First Hundred Years Langford, Ella Molloy 1921 Butler Center, Little Rock Public Library, Arkansas F417 .J6 L2 (also Dallas, TX main library, Clarksville Library) Goodspeed - Biographical & Historical Memoirs of Western Arkansas The Southern Publishing Company, Chicago and Nashville 1891 Again, this is at the Butler Center, the Dallas library, and the Arkansas History Commission. Probate Records, Johnson County, Arkansas Mickel, Lillian Don't have the number, but this is also in Dallas, the History Commision, and The Butler Center. It is an extract of names from public records, and in a sense serves as an index for much of the county. This may still be available for purchase from the Johnson County Historical Society. You might check catalogs for Ft. Smith as well. I haven't found the names you've posted, but in the pre-1865 period there isn't much more than the deed books. You can get film of these through the LDS Family History Libraries, or again at the Arkansas History Commission or the Clarksville Library. Almost everything "on paper" was destroyed when the Courthouse was burned durning the War Between the States. That little which is available is on microfilm (mainly the deed books) is thanks to a county official who buried it at his farm during the war, and the big state effort to microfilm everything for the Bicentennial in 1976. And in response to an earlier query, this same circumstance means that unless you know you are going to see something that exists, it is much better to do your preliminary Johnson County research through the LDS or Arkansas History Commission microfilm. From the point of view of actual records, up to 1876, if they don't show it as existing, it likely doesn't. The Courthouse does not have anything earlier that is "unknown", and that which is known is not yet easily accessible. Several folks are working on that project, but it is slow.