Usually most people who had property left either a will or an estate record. Other records that contain information about family relationships are deeds, which usually involve land or slaves. Estate and wills can be ordered from the North Carolina Archives. See section on estate records for more information. If you have many Stanly Co. ancestors, I encourage you to join the Stanly Co. Genealogical Society.
Membership is only seven dollars and members receive a journal four times a year.
One benefit of joining the society is that they publish a list of members each year in the last issue that includes the surnames that an individual is researching. Since the majority of Stanly Co. researchers are not online, this is a way of making contact with often more experienced researchers, who might have some information on your family. I frequently see incorrect information on Stanly Co. families on mailing lists and query boards. Unless someone has documented evidence, you should consider their statements as possibly unreliable and needing to be verified. The majority of African Americans in Stanly Co. before the end of the Civil War were slaves.