About half of the first volume of this work discusses the standard topics of local history, including Preston's Native American heritage, European discovery, pioneer period, Preston County before and after the Civil War, and institutional subjects such as industry, churches, schools, turnpikes and railroads, and so on. The genealogical meat of the work commences in the middle of Volume I with two alphabetically arranged sections of genealogical/biographical notes on hundreds of early Preston County families, lists of Preston countians in various wars, Preston County octogenarians living in 1914, and abstracts of Preston County land patents. Volume II consists entirely of 135 biographical and genealogical sketches of Preston County luminaries and their families.