Sorry, Dick, I think of Pendleton as having come from Highland because I'm constantly having to look back and forth between them for various ancestors who lived in just one place...but county lines kept changing around them. Thanks for the reminder that some of my ancestors records that I can't find may be in Hardy Co. To get a better understanding of it all, it might be worthwhile to further check out the histories of Highland Co. and Augusta Co. on the VAGENWEB sites. Compiled from "The History of Highland County" By Oren F. Morton, 1922 and found on the Highland Co., VA site: >Like Pendleton, Highland has Shenandoah Mountain on the east and the Allegheny Front on the west. Its geographic features are therefore very much like those of the northern county. But since its valleys are crossed by the series of saddle-ridges that separate the waters of the Potomac from those of the James, the average elevation is greater and the climate is cooler. The first line between Pendleton and Augusta followed the cross-divide and was consequently a natural boundary. Furthermore, the first settlers south of the divide were almost wholly Scotch-Irish. North of it the German element was much in the lead. But in 1796 the Pendleton line was moved southward from four to twelve miles, and so remained until 1847.< Diane