This 385-page book abstracts Stewart County's 18 earliest surviving Settlements and Bonds books, covering the period 1804-1896. These are the most genealogically-rich county records, and are sometimes called the "will books". Transactions recorded in the Settlements and Bonds books included, but were not limited to:* wills* estate inventories, sales and settlements* delinquent tax reports* guardian and apprenticeship bonds, and guardians' reports* juries of inquest into murders and deaths by suspicious cause * emancipation bonds* county officers bonds* administrators' and executors' bonds* tavern-keeper and ferry-keeper bonds* poor house commissioners' reports Special entries also appearing in the book include:* an 1820 deposition, taken at the future site of Memphis, describing the land at the mouth of Wolf River in the 1790's* district boundaries as established in the 1836 division of Stewart County into civil districtsFor the period 1817-1824, the original Settlements and Bonds book is severely fragmented. This publication supplements that loss by providing similar information that could be found in the County Court Minutes for the same period. The book includes an every-name index and a place index.