This wonderful county court, before and since which there has been none like it, adapted or adjusted its jurisdictional powers and methods to all matters, questions and conditions that could be brought in any way to its notice. When a stranger came into the community, it did not content itself with letting him alone, no matter how quietly and orderly he might conduct himself; it had him interviewed, as the entry here quoted will prove: The Court Order that Wm Clary a trancient person give security for his behavior, and return to his family within five months, as the said Clary is without any pass or recommendation and confesses he left his family and have taken up with another woman. The most that the average detective could have gotten out of Clary would have been that he came from--where he started, and was going--where he went; but the court found out more than this about him, and they must have got it from his own mouth, as the order, after reciting facts that they could have gotten from him only, concludes by setting forth a very damaging confession which he had made, and which, all will agree, justified the court in requiring security of him for his behavior while he might remain in their midst, and peremptorily ordering him to return to his family within a stated time. By the time of the meeting of the August term, 1784, the court had pretty well purged the country of traitors, horse thieves, “trancients,” etc. At this term the court seems to have turned its attention to the ugly habits of some of the very respectable; for, on the first day of the term, as the record shows, fines were imposed and paid as follows: “Eml. Carter three prophane oaths 8s. 10d. pd: Pharoh Cobb four prophane oaths 10s. 8d. pd: Buckner Nantz One prophane swearing Oath prays mercy Granted: Valentine Sevier for prophanely swearing 4 Oaths fined 10s. 8d. pd: Mark Mitchell for swearing One prophane Oath fined 2s. 8d. Patrick Murphey One Oath, Michael Tylloy Two Oaths.” This treatment seems to have been effective; for, no fines being recorded after the first day, it is reasonably sure that no “prophane oaths” were indulged in, during the remainder of the term--at least in hearing of the court. As a result of the many battles with the Indians, and the numerous Indian massacres which had occurred, numbers of children were left without fathers or mothers. They had no orphan asylum, but the records of the court show that homes were provided for these wards, nevertheless, by the Watauga and King’s Mountain heroes. They had no county asylum for the poor; but the county court, whose jurisdiction could be extended to meet all emergencies, “ordered” some citizen by name to “take and keep” the person named therein for the time specified. These orders contained no recital that they were made by the consent of anyone--they emanated from the inherent power and duty of the court, as it believed, to provide for the poor.