Great stuff on Franklin county, Bill. I did not know that. And you are correct about the other counties. The early county lines were ill defined and fluctuated back and forth. Early Brunswick is a prime example. If we think we "know" where the line was at any give date, we are probably wrong. The Governor or the Assembly would "proclaim" the defined boundaries back in Williamsburg. But the actual implementation and surveying were often quite different, and even then, they moved back and forth. The southern boundary of Brunswick was fixed by the survey of William Byrd at the NC/Va. staight line, in 1729/30. But Brunswick was tentatively "proclaimed" some ten years before the survey. The southern boundary was the easy part after Byrd. People will tell us that the western boundary of Brunswick was at the top of the Blue Ridge, just beyond the present line of western Bedford. This was not the case. "Brunswick County was to extend sufficiently westward to the Blue Ridge to include in it's limits the Southern Pass, located near the head of the Roanoke River. The pass, in present day Floyd County, was later known as Wood's Gap and Jarman's Gap." This was the "tail" that extended beyond the Blue Ridge. The Great Valley was just about empty at this time. I suspect they were not sure where the "head" of the Roanoke was in 1720. Which fork, for example. The same was true of the pass at the James. At that time they thought these two passes were the only way through, and they were "funnels" for the Indians. The northern and eastern boundaries were just as confusing. "Until the governor shall settle a Court in Brunswick, the justices of Prince George County shall take power over them by their warrants, and the clerks of the said Court by their processes....in the same manner as before the said county was constituted..." So we have twelve years or more when governance of eastern Brunswick was by Prince George. And the northern boundary is beyond description here. Goochland, Amelia, Albemarle. The boundary moved from the Appomattox, to south of the Appomattox, then back up to the Appomattox, then back up to the James. And the lapse in the building of the new courthouses, and the surveys, adds to the problem. Knowing which county your very early kin lived in is a crapshoot. And the old original Brunswick was the size of Massachusetts. The one constant in all this is that the Assembly always figured out a way to collect the taxes, no matter where you lived. Ha. Some things never change. Edwin