The vast majority of Gloucester County records were destroyed in fires in 1820 and 1865. This work, published as two volumes in one and spanning the period 1635 to 1800, is the result of Polly Mason's prodigious effort to reconstruct the records of Gloucester County from other sources. Volume I "puts the colonial people back in Gloucester on their lands," citing a variety of land ownership or tax lists relating to Gloucester County, while the second volume focuses on the movement of Gloucester residents into neighboring counties, as evidenced in abstracts of deed books from those counties. This is the true starting point for Gloucester County genealogy.