Hi, My great grandfather John W Moore has this to say about that burning "....a similar catastrophe befell the county of Hertford Saturday August 22nd 1830, a man named Wright Allen was said to have procured an incendiary to burn the Court House in Winton. Allen stood indicted for forgery, and was subsequently convicted and punished for altering the amount of a note given by Timothy Ridley of Manney's Neck. The culprit was a man of respectability and consideration and his punishment at the whipping post created a great excitement in our midst. His object in procuring the burning of the Court House was to destroy the evidence of his crime in the forged note. But he failed in this from the fact that the clerk, Lewis M Cowper had it with him in Murfreesboro. The greater portion of the records were destroyed." first appeared in the Murfreesboro Enquirer in 1877, from a reprint by David Powell of Moore's "Historical Sketches of Hertford County" Sally Moore Koestler -- Sally Koestler Sally's Family Place http://www2.txcyber.com/~smkoestl