Myrna:
I corresponded with Freda quite some time back and know she has been looking even longer than me.
The county formation for Catawba and Lincoln is fairly straightforward, as such things go. It will be a bit of a document, so hold on!
Early NC was the property of a group of English nobles, referred to as the Lords Proprietors. They were given the territory of present North and South Carolina in the 1660's. In 1729, the Crown bought out all but one of them. The holdout, Lord Granville, was given a strip of land from the Virginia boundary to about the current northern edge of Mecklenburg county (and the lengthe of the colony of North Carolina, east to west). His family held this as personal property and granted land until 1763. In 1763-1778, no official title could be given because there were no representatives here. [It is said some landholders may have bent the rules and got their grants through Mecklenburg County, even though it should not have happened.] In 1778, the state of NC took over the land and began issuing grants.
The property south of the 'Granville line' was granted throughout this time by the Crown and then by the state. The Granville line was the boundary between Rowan and Anson counties, which reached as far as the state's claimed lands to the west (varied over time). In 1762, Mecklenburg was separated from Anson, still reaching all the way west. In 1769, Tryon county was formed from Mecklenburg, with the Catawba River as the boundary. Tryon was abolished in 1779, being divided into Lincoln (closest to the river) and Rutherford (the western part).
In the Granville lands, a new county was established in 1777 from Rowan. This was Burke County, which began at the Catawba River, north of Tryon and extended west and northwest. By 1784, the eastern part of Burke County (south of the Catawba) had been removed from Burke and added to Lincoln.
Lincoln county was divided twice after that. The southern part became Gaston County (in 1846) and the northern part became Catawba County (in 1842).
Present Lincoln County was mainly in the Crown lands, but its northern edge may have been in the Granville lands.
I hope this is somewhat clear...
I'm going to post the Henline part separately.