Greetings All - Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all !!! Another avenue which I found useful is the LDS Family History centers - the library folks went through the county in the early 60s and microfilmed just about everything in the courthouse in Vinton County. Even though I visited the courthouse last year, I was really too new to genealogy to get a huge amount of information but I did learn a lot. Later, I ordered films to be sent to my local Family History Center so I could peruse them at a more leisurely pace and fill in gaps and connections I was unaware of during my visit to Vinton County. I was also able to make photocopies of film pages for my records as needed. You can actually search for keywords such as "vinton" "county" "probate" etc. at the LDS website and come up with film numbers that you get on loan to your local FHC ( visit www.familysearch.org and look for links to the library catalog). You do not need to be LDS in order to use these resources either. Happy Holidays all !! john evans - colorado springs, co