I posted this to another list dealing with some of the same areas, so please excuse it if this is a duplication. I live in California and have only briefly been to the general locality where many of my ancestors lived in the 1700's: Tazewell, Washington, Lee, and Smyth counties in Va, as well as the city of Bristol. They were the Wittens and Cecils, near Witten's Fort in Tazewell, and Darby McCarty's family who married into the Hays and Gillespie families etc. I have not been able to go much farther back for some years now, but obviously there is a "dead end" somewhere on every line. I have started to be interested in the general stories of the lives and places in those days, though of course any productive research about my own family would be great. My husband and I have been talking for some time about just driving around the area, and perhaps trying to think about what the area would have looked like a couple of centuries ago. We plan to do this in June, for a couple of weeks. I did once get an 1828 marriage certificate for Enoch McCarty and Nancy Gillespie from Bristol City, so I suppose I could see if any official records were there, which I might have missed, as I have been working from 3000 miles away. I do have some deeds from Washington County, which were found in LDS records. In other words, I dont know of much new in the way of records which I might be able to uncover when we go to this area to look around. I thought I would inquire if someone who knows this area better than I do would have any suggestions. Are there any little-known places where I might find records which I have not known about? We do plan to follow some of the old "trails" and migration paths, where possible. Any other suggestions, either for records, or interesting places? We did visit Witten's Fort some years ago, and it was very moving to me. Anelle McCarty Kloski