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Following up on her 2004 work, Families of Cabarrus County, North Carolina, Kathleen Marler has assembled an alphabetically arranged collection of abstracts of early inhabitants of Mecklenburg County, the parent county of Cabarrus. The principal sources for her book are Mecklenburg County Deed Volumes 1-3 (July 1778 through September 1786), Mecklenburg wills, the 1790 U.S. Census for Mecklenburg County, and several other primary and secondary sources. Although deeds are not as strong in establishing relationships as, say wills, they have the virtue of placing individuals in a particular place at a moment in time. Since they also indicate the names of prior, as well as current, deed holders, the coverage of this book extends outside the years of the deeds themselves, from 1762 through 1790.

Typically, the abstracts provide the names of the deed holders (frequently spouses), the property's location, names of adjoining landowners, sometimes the names of other family members, and more. Complete with maps showing Mecklenburg and Cabarrus county waterways and townships, this important collection provides about 15,000 references to inhabitants of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, during the years under investigation.