Page:A Guide to the Preparation of County Road Histories.pdf/11



The primary source of information on the roads of a county is the road orders issued by the gentlemen justices of the county court and recorded in the order books of the county. Directed to one specific individual, usually styled overseer, or surveyor, of highways or roads, these orders briefly described the road or portion of it to be built or maintained and set forth in a very general way those labouring male titheables who would maintain it. Usually issued yearly with the appointment of new surveyors, these orders constitute the bedrock of the foundation of any road history worthy of the name. Without them, certainly without the major part surviving, it would be impossible to speak with any degree of authority concerning the development of the roads of a county. Although surviving vestry books, deed books, and the records of adjacent counties might prove of some benefit, the road orders are essential. All other records, as well as maps, provide only supporting evidence to that of the road orders.

Since the geographic boundaries of a county have likely changed through the years as other counties were created from it, a provenance chart for the county under consideration should be prepared as a preliminary to any historic survey of a road or roads, This should show the pilot county, its date of formation, whence (and when) came its component parts, their derivation back at least to the threshold of settlement of the area in the pilot county, the provenance of the adjacent counties, their later progeny, etc. This chart is designed to enable the investigator to locate the records of the areas within the pilot county at any given point in its development. All additions to or subtractions from the areas of the counties should also be entered on the chart, which is best prepared in the form of a block diagram. Figure 1 is an example of the most basic form of this diagram, with the development of adjacent counties yet to be added. The importance of this chart cannot be overemphasised. It might also be noted here that county lines in some cases, such as where they follow watersheds, tend to be rather indistinct and that the date of formation, subdivision, etc. of a county cannot be relied upon as an absolute index of where records will be located. On occasion an overlap of several years may occur after formation of a county before all its records consistently occur within it.

The first step in the writing of a county road history, or an individual road or turnpike study, should be the construction of a comprehensive provenance chart similar to that for Albemarle County shown in Figure 2. This chart illustrates graphically the development of Albemarle County, its antecedents, and the adjacent counties, and the condition of their records today, with the primary emphasis remaining on the records of Albemarle County. Its basic form was constructed from charts (see Figure 1) found in Morgan P. Robinson's. The experience gained in the study of Albemarle roads will be used to illustrate the usefulness of this chart. Since some roads obviously existed in the area of Albemarle County at its formation in 1744, the chart, once prepared, – 5 –