About the burned records in the Courthouse. As everyone probably knows, when a land deed is recorded at the courthouse, the clerk simply makes a copy of the deed in a ledger and returns the original deed to the land owner. That owner then takes the deed home or places it in a safe deposit box. (Just as a side note here: An early day clerk making a hand written copy of a handwritten deed goes a long way toward explaining why a name may be spelled three different ways on a record.) After Shelby County's courthouse burned, many--maybe all--landowners took their deeds back in to be recorded again. The courthouse burned in 1882, but my family found helpful deeds that were executed in 1870. A family of adult children made land divisions among themselves of land from their deceased parents. That was proof of who the children of the family were. After the fire, they rerecorded their land deeds. That is not as good as finding extant records, but this is to let you know that some land deed records are older than 1882. Personally, I think it would be a wonderful project for the historical societies to abstract the land deeds prior to 1900 Charlene Walker Brazell