In answer to Joyce, who asked "...if there was no wife's signature on an early deed, could there have been such a wife anyhow?" To answer; we have a saying, "At marriage a man and woman became one person, and that person was the man." In Tennessee, as in nearly ALL the Southern States, the belongings of a woman - land and personal property alike - became the property of the husband when she married him, and men could buy land (or anything else) with no participation or assent whatever by the wife. HOWEVER, no one with good sense or sound judgment would ever buy land without the written assent to the sale by the seller's wife, since to do so would be to ignore her near inviolate rights to a "widow's share" in that land (and any other he came to own during the marriage) at the death of that husband, no matter how much later that death occurred. So, NO signature on a deed of the wife almost without exception meant there was NO wife at the date of the deed. Notice though, if the husband owned the land BEFORE the marriage, under some circumstances her rights would not attach if she bore no children by him. Paul