Hi, All my MUDD direct ancestors lived over in Bullitt County between 1798 and 1893 so I have another reason for joining the list here in Fayette County. In the course of researching my ancestors in Bullitt County recently, I discovered one who was a slaveholder. I shared that information with an African American genealogy group and to make a long story short, one thing led to another and I've become involved in what to me has become a fascinating project. A court record book was found just this past summer buried among old boxes in the basement of the Adams County, Mississippi Court House in Natchez. It was filled with what are called "Certificates of Slaves" dating between 1858-1861. Each certificate lists the slaves name, the slaveowner, the date and the state & county where it was drawn up among other things. The slaveowner in all cases in this particular record book was always a slave trader who had already bought the slaves from local slaveowners and was transporting them down to the Natchez slave markets. There are three of us who have just finished transcribing the 1600 certificates. For anyone tracing their African American ancestors this is quite a find because nearly a third of the entries include both the first and last names of the slaves. Almost 750 of the 1600 certificates were drawn up in Fayette County. I'll provide the web link for anyone interested when we publish it next month, Black History Month, on the AfriGeneas web site <www.afrigeneas.com/>. Before the information is made available on the web, we wanted to provide a brief introduction. Because Fayette County and the City of Lexington in particular are one of the focal points of the story these certificates tell, we want to set the historical stage with good accurate information about the life and times in Fayette County between 1858-1861. Naturally we'll be focusing mainly on the slave trade but the social conditions, various life styles and how various people in the area thought of slavery is important and I want to include it. Georgia Wise, one of the members of our trio, lives in Alabama and has just returned from Natchez where she spent the holidays with relatives and was also able to gather historical information about that city during the time of what we have come to call the 'Natchez Record Book'. Gloria McCallum and myself live on the West Coast; she lives in Seattle and I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. We are doing this project in our own free time and with no budget except out of our own pockets and the information will only be made available to non-commercial genealogy groups. I'm planning a trip to Kentucky this spring to see the land of my ancestors but none of us is currently able to get to Lexington. So if anyone could suggest a good book or two that we might be able to get through an inter-library loan or any other documents or sources of information about Lexington and Fayette County during this time period, it would be very much appreciated. By the way, I have a copy of the genealogy study entitled "The Mudd Family of the United States" edited by Richard D. MUDD so if there is anyone needing information on MUDDs in Fayette County, I would be happy to look them up for you. I hope none of you minds me joining the group for this purpose rather than searching for ancestors. Bill Mudd San Francisco Bay Area