Charles, (cc to DM list) In the mail, you should have received an electronic virus on CD--the key to an insidious new disease, worse even than SARS, and certainly much worse than genealogy. It's called deed mapping. Upon opening the CD, you should see the icon for a quick-time run of Deed Mapper (blue creek bisecting green plat). Open the file called: Burke Land Grants. With luck, it will open on the Matthew Wilson parallelogram of land granted by NC Gov. Dobbs in 1755. The position is currently locked-- it can be placed when a true position is known.The only Point, except for trees, is James Robinson's line. James is buried in the cemetery http://www.rootsweb.com/~nccatawb/wilson1/cemetery.htm along with Matthew Wilson, the Pioneer. I'm requesting copies of the original land grant(s) from Raleigh, along with those of some neighbors, as they are discovered. I want to be able to overlay the original Crown Grant land on a current topo. I have added a few folders with samples and other local plats. I hope to link the Clark's Creek/South Fork/Lyle Creek neighborhood with the original Burke County set, a contiguous set from that originated from Dr. McNeely. The Burke County Land Grant page is: http://www.rootsweb.com/~ncburke/landgrnt.htm This study would have never been possible without the dedicated work of Dr. Emmett R. White, M.D., Rutherford College, NC and Dr. Robert L. McNeely, Professor of Chemistry, Univ. of Tenn.-Chattanooga. Dr. White is the author of "Revolutionary War Soldiers of Western North Carolina" (2 vol.), and an acknowledged scholar and leading authority of Western North Carolina history, pre-Colonial to present. Dr. McNeely, working very closely with Dr. White, transferred the transcribed deeds to a digital format using DeedMapper. I took the analog and digital information and have combined several other deeds that make the map contiguous. The web page is an index by number and a year. Copies of the original Land Grants can still be obtained from the Burke County Library. I would love to see an on-line database. Drs. White and McNeely have insisted that their work be placed in the public domain which is the one of the highest examples of public service. For the sake of free intellectual resources, I'd love to see a national database of land property covering the original land ownership. Perhaps the original DeedMapper format (below), or a modification thereof, could be accessed via the web : Typ grant, deed, sale, etc. ID File 0190 Ref Grant 0191 (Library:Grant,Claim) Adj Entry 0257 Rec 14 Mar 1780 (date for the actual land grant) Dat 07 Jun 1778 (is the date for the original claim-entry) Frm Bk28;p190 (reference book and page) To (to whom property conveyed) ! First Survey (comments) Lbl (and other owners) Con 640a (total acreage) Author/Transcriber (ex: Kaye S. Hendricks) Re (geographic location, ex: So of So. Fork) Wit (Witnesses, chain carriers, etc.) Pt (Anything at all, white oak, big rock, etc.) Ln (Example: s; 103p; ---n23e; 100p; end In addition, I'd like to suggest the addition of a universal geographic code, example: Doc (country/state-province/county/township/city--geographically-searchable) There is a demo that I used to illustrate the program for the Burke Co. Genealogical Society: YOUR CD-DRIVE:\DeedMap\Deeds & Grants in North Carolina\DM Demo-John Hardin\RunMe-DeedMapper.pps If you check the included Word documents you'll get a better perspective of land measurements and the history of surveying. This demo is a very effective, dramatic and educational presentation. The input file RunMe-DeedMapper.pps will run the show --Derick Should Dr. White or Dr. McNeely or others like a CD copy of my demo (John Hardin of Burke County, NC), please write.