Author and historian Martha McCartney of Williamsburg and Mathews has some surprises in store for local residents in her upcoming book “Mathews County Virginia: Lost Landscapes, Untold Stories.”

The book is due for release on Wednesday, Dec. 2, the same day that McCartney will give a talk at a reception in her honor hosted by the Mathews County Historical Society, which commissioned the book. The reception will begin at 7 p.m. at Kingston Parish House, Main Street, Mathews. It is free and open to the public. The book will be available for purchase, and the author will sign copies.

McCartney said that while researching the book, she had found a wealth of information in patent records, including details such as a land patent given to the Chiskiack Indians for 5,000 acres of land along the Piankatank River in the vicinity of the Cobbs Creek and Dutton neighborhoods and a land patent from the 1630s that shows that Col. Hugh Gwynn wasn’t the only patent holder on Gwynn&r...