Karmella, I know of two sets of will abstract books for Edgecombe. I think you have abstracts from each. One was published in the 1950s by Ruth Williams and Marguerite Griffin. The other was done in the 80s or early 90s by David Gammon. The ladies in the fifties were concerned only with white genealogy and did their books accordingly. Another example besides leaving out slave names in the will abstracts is the book they did Tombstones of Edgecombe County, in which they only included white cemeteries. A product of the time, place, and interest, I suppose. I also would imagine the only people they knew who were doing genealogy were white; my impression is that the hobby was mainly one indulged in by rich white people until "Roots" sparked interest in the '70s. I very much prefer using Gammon's books, because of the more complete information and also because the layout of his books make them easy to use. He also includes an indexes of slave names and women's names along with a general index. I must point out, the best source is always the *original.* If you haven't got a copy of the original will I would strongly suggest getting one from the State Archives in Raleigh. Abstracts are handy, but never assume the abstractor got everything 100% right. Hope that helps, Traci Karmella Haynes <kh_art@yahoo.com> I discovered something peculiar. Earlier I had requested the abstract of the will of Peter Knight (1809) for the names of his children. I was hoping to get more info. on his slaves. One kind member of this list sent me a transcribed abstract, but the "negroes" were unnamed. I was shuffling through my papers and found some copied pages from will abstract book 1793-1823. I had forgotten I had this. I found the abstract of Peter Knight's will and it DOES name his slaves. Are there two different abstracts or is someone being "shy" with the slave info.? ---Karmella _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp