In a message dated 10/31/2007 12:02:48 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, nclincol-request@rootsweb.com writes: <<Well, I've been there, and it doesn't seem large at all. It quite small as a matter of fact. And I have no clue as to what difference the "companies" make. It was simply a small area where a specific person took the census.>> As the person who asked the original question, I can answer it. I am interesting in discovering exactly where my immigrant ancestors settled in the 1770s - not what county, but what section of what stream. The deeds and wills I have examined are not easy to interpret because they use stream names not currently used and they refer to neighboring properties by the names of then-current owners. Also, census records are sometimes mistaken - John Parr in the 1790 census seems to actually be my John Darr ancestor. But it is hard to be certain. My goal in research is to accumulate all the evidence I can find and then reach a judgment based on the available facts. If I could overlay the "company" boundaries on the map, I might have a better answer to that and other questions. I, too, have been to County. I have viewed the Andrew Derr (John's brother) cemetery, deep in the woods near Denver, which may be the right area. But the terrain has changed with development and it is hard to know whether that is where his father settled. (If the answers to these questions were easy, we probably would not find the searches enjoyable.) Jack Darr San Francisco ************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com

31 October 2007, Jack Darr <Jedarr@aol.com > wrote: > > [Snipped] > > I am interesting in discovering exactly where my immigrant ancestors settled in the 1770s - not what county, but what section of what stream. The deeds and wills I have examined are not easy to interpret because they use stream names not currently used and they refer to neighboring properties by the names of then-current owners. We all grapple with the puzzles that Jack Darr describes. There is no one answer but a couple of resources are helpful. The following resource lists North Carolina streams and other geographical locations including those that are no longer used: William S. Powell, /The North Carolina Gazetteer: A Dictionary of Tar Heel Places/ (Chapel Hill: the University of North Carolina Press, 1968). This is a valuable resource that is still in print and available for a reasonable price. Deeds, wills, and other documents often refer to neighboring properties by the names of folks who were neighbors when the land entry was originally claimed. This could be (and usually was) many year earlier. Even though the neighboring property owners changed over the years, the person deeding or bequeathing the land naturally uses the description in his original title. Why? Because surveys cost money and many people don't want to incur the expense of a new survey. Thus, the land is described according to the original title and not by who is a current neighbor. The first thing to do is track the land back to when your ancestor acquired it. At each step collect the land description and the names of neighbors. Sometimes this goes as far back to a land patent as early as the 1760s. This is one of the research steps that reveals where an ancestor lived. Fortunately, Lincoln County researchers have many records abstracted or transcribed and indexed, such as Margaret Hofmann's abstracts of North Carolina land patents, Bruce Pruitt's abstracts of Lincoln County deeds, and my transcriptions of Lincoln County Court minutes. Kathy Gunter sullivan