During my research of the Revolutionary War in North Carolina, I was gently nudged into the North Carolina State Archives in Raleigh. There, in the county records, all of the original county petitions reside. However, they are un-indexed other than by county and era (year range). Researching Orange County seemed like a hike up Mount Everest. It quickly became apparent that I was not going to have time to read every piece of paper while searching for names and locations without many visits to the archives. Therefore, I opted to photograph the papers and read them at home at my leisure.
It didn’t take long before I realized there was a lot of information embedded in these records such as names of people residing near the roads, bridges, or mills; names of neighbors; former owners of land; creek names; distances from towns; crops grown; distance to the nearest railroad station; and the list goes on. Not every slip of paper had this type of information and very few drawings or maps were included with these petitions. Nevertheless, these records are a rich source of information for historians and especially genealogists.