Mr. Davidson's history of Wilkinson County takes on added importance owing to the 1852 fire in the county courthouse that destroyed a number of the county's pre-Civil War records. Indeed, the middle quarter of the book includes abstracts of several thousand Wilkinson County marriage records and, to a lesser extent, wills and Civil War muster rolls for Wilkinson County. The balance of the work is almost evenly divided between a narrative history of the county and genealogical and biographical essays treating about 100 Wilkinson County families.