This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Newlon, (Newlin), Propst, Webster, Hedges, Hall Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/lg.2ADE/1115 Message Board Post: Thanks to all of you for your helpful responses to my questions. I went to Paris yesterday. Spent half a day at the gen. library there. There was a gentleman volunteer--very nice--who helped me. I then went to the court house--pretty much in fear and trembling--HA! I've never done that before. They were so very nice. Invited me back into the vault. Wow--talk about history. I just stood there looking at spines and reading the volumes and volumes of info -- way back into the early 1800's. I found the land records I was looking for. What I found out was that the ORIGINAL deed books are at the Genealogy library. You cannot photo copy them. BUT, there are exact replicas of those books at the court house that you CAN photo copy. (If you make the copies of deed records yourself they are 50 cents a copy--the ladies helped me figure out how to unlock the bindings and use the copy machine). I was tickled to see the originals--over 150 years old--at the library. But we cou! ldn't find my ancestor there. That was because the seller was the US gov't. He got his land by patent straight from the government--I found all the listings in the land patent index at the court house. Then when I checked his name in the seller index (just to be thorough), I found he sold all the land within 2 years of the purchase date. Then I had to climb to the ceiling on this neat old ladder and lift down about a 15 lb. ledger. There they were--deed info of his sales of the land. Then the upsetting news--it wasn't the right wife. So I pondered--went ahead and copied them. When I got home and considered it--the time frame is right that this wife could have died and he remarried my 4G grandmother. I vaguely remember the fella finding a woman by that name in one of the cemetery books at the gen. lib. So I will send a query and find the date. If it fits--he may have married twice. I feel like Sherlock Holmes. Isn't family research fun! So--a great experience ! at the genealogy library and the court house in Paris--very pleasant a nd helpful employees and volunteers.