"NEW" INFO FOUND For years, most of us who have been researching our early roots in North Carolina have been frustrated by the fact the records of Old Dobbs County were destroyed in a courthouse fire. Old Dobbs was formed in 1758 from part of Johnston County. In 1779, part of western Dobbs became the new Wayne County. Dobbs County existed until 1791, when the county was split into the two new counties of Greene on the north and Lenoir County on the south. The records of the former Dobbs County were transferred to the new county of Lenoir, where they were kept until a courthouse fire in 1878, which destroyed most of the records of Old Dobbs, along with those of Lenoir. Another courthouse fire took place just two years later in 1880. All of the marriage bonds and licenses, deeds, wills, estate records, court records and other public documents in the courthouse were lost. This is the area where our ancestors settled in the 1730's and still has one of the largest concentrations of our family in the nation today. The last time I was at the Lenoir County courthouse in Kinston,NC was back in 1986--so I was not aware of the fact that one important source of information WAS saved during those two courthouse fires. They managed to save the "Grantor Deed Index Book" during the first fire. This index book was then used by court officials to create a new "Grantee Deed Index Book". Then, when the courthouse burned again in 1880, they managed to save both these books. However, they became "lost" or just forgotten for the next 100 years. Then, back in the mid-1980's, some historian managed to find the Grantee Deed Index Book in a courthouse closet. A "grantor" is the one who sells property; a "grantee" is the one who is buying (or receiving it as a gift, etc.). The index is just that--all the information it has is simply who sold property and who bought or received it and the page in the deed books it was recorded on. That doesn't sound like much until you realize it is the ONLY county record we have!! For one thing, it can tell us when an ancestor was living in the area. It also named one Sasser that I was totally unaware of until now. I wrote an article about this in the online family newsletter. Check it out. ALSO: Thanks to a friend in Maryland, our Sasser Family Library now has a xerox copy of the book, "THE SASSCER FAMILY IN MARYLAND", written in 1964 by L. S. Moffett. The only other copy I had been aware of so far is one in the Library of Congress. Note the spelling. This spelling came into general use by most of the family living in Prince George's County, Maryland during the late 1800's. Prior to then, the spelling SASSER was generally used. The book quotes records going back to the 1600's. The book itself contains 57 pages, and includes several more pages for the index. I have been so excited about the book and making new family record sheets for a lot of "new" kinfolks and adding to family sheets on those I already knew about, that I haven't been able to finish reading all of it yet. This is a very valuable addition of information for our Family Library on the family in Maryland and Virginia. It shows they originally started out in Virginia and then moved into Maryland. They settled in Prince George's County, now a Washington, DC suburb, and Somerset County, on the DelMarVa peninsula across Chesapeake Bay bordering the peninsula part of Virginia. Huge numbers of early colonists arrived in the Southern Colonies at small towns and villages in this area because they were better ports than those in Carolina Colony (now both North Carolina and South Carolina). Our eternal thanks to ELLEN MAYES for sending this. She said she had tried to locate the author but she and I both believe he may be dead now. Your cuz, Robert Earl Woodham