Page:A Guide to the Preparation of County Road Histories.pdf/12

 indicated that the starting point for research lay somewhere within the records of its antecedent counties at that time when the first road being opened westward approached its borders. As the earliest land patents in the area were known to date from around 1730 it seemed logical to expect to find roads then beginning to penetrate the area as a result of the settlement of these. To be on the safe side Henrico County records were first examined from about 1720 to the creation of Goochland County in 1728, but this effort was without result. Goochland County records were more productive, showing the first road being built into the area about 1731. Since this was so close to its date of formation (1728), it was decided to record all the Goochland road orders from that date forward to the formation of Albemarle in 1744.

In addition to Goochland, which contributed approximately the lower two-thirds of the present Albemarle County in 1744, Louisa also played a significant part in the development of the county. In 1761, as a result of the subdivision into several counties of the Greater Albemarle of 1744, what was then the western portion of Louisa County was added to Albemarle. This meant that the records of Louisa and its parent county, Hanover, had also to be searched. As the provenance chart so clearly reveals, almost all the early records of Hanover are lost, as well as the Louisa order books from 1748 to 1766. Therefore, only those orders in the surviving first order book of Louisa could be recorded. Although it is regrettable that those for this area in the period 1730-1742 are not available, it was possible with the aid of the surviving 1742-1748 orders, and using the experience of that adjacent portion of Goochland during the same period, to draw some conclusions regarding road development in the area. These are probably accurate within a range of two or three years either way.

Besides enabling those doing research to know in which county or counties the area within the present county lay at each period of its development, once prepared the chart shows at a glance the condition of their records, if their coverage is discontinuous, ., and it can, if necessary, be expanded to show where such information is presently located if it has been moved from the county to such repositories as the Virginia State Library in Richmond. For counties now in Kentucky and West Virginia, important records may be found here and in the counties from which they were originally divided.

Since a good provenance chart will also show the parallel development of the adjacent counties, their parent counties, and additions and subtractions which have been made to their areas, it should prove invaluable in cases where it is necessary to consult the records of one of these counties. The Albemarle chart here provides a case in point. During the preparation of the Three Notch'd Road report it became necessary to ascertain the date of the first road through Wood's Gap in the Blue Ridge. The chart indicated that the records for Augusta County were, after the formation of the county in 1738 and prior to a county government being set up there in 1745, located in Orange County whence it was governed during this seven-year period. An examination of the order books of Orange County produced orders for this road in 1738 or 1739 along with marginal notations by an early historian indicating that the entry dealt with Wood's Gap rather than Rockfish. Had the chart – 6 –