Page:A Guide to the Preparation of County Road Histories.pdf/26

 of information relevant to road development would be a very time-consuming procedure and still might ultimately prove of little benefit to the research. Where deed abstracts are available, as in the case of Louisa County 1742-1774, they may occasionally be resorted to with some benefit by the researcher, bearing in mind, of course, the rather limited use of roads as property boundaries in the early period.

Probably the most advantageous and effective use of deed information can be made by the spot search technique, which is essentially corroborative in nature. Here the area to be examined has usually been narrowed to several adjacent pieces of property thought to be the approximate location of an early road whose location (and name) may have been changed over a long period of time. Even then the title search and plat examination often will produce conflicting data and pose questions which simply cannot be resolved with the existing information.

A word might be inserted here concerning the dating of evidence as it relates to the initial opening of a road. With no good early maps existing for most counties, contemporary road orders are usually the best source, when they are obtainable, with plats, maps, deeds and whatever else is available serving to confirm the road orders. The nearer the date of any of these latter to the date of the initial series of orders concerning the road, the better they should be considered as evidence in a particular case. Now, as it often transpires that this other evidence may be separated from the orders by a considerable period of time, and that this evidence may conflict either with the earlier evidence, or even with all of the other later supporting evidence, it seems that some exclusionary rule should be formulated for such cases.

With this need in view, and taking into consideration the experience of all those associated with this project in attempting to research the eighteenth century roads of Albemarle, it would seem that the greatest weight should be given to that evidence falling within a 25-to 30-year period following the initial orders concerning the road, and somewhat less to that falling within a 30-to 60-year period after the initial orders.

That evidence dating as much as, or more than, 50 or 60 years after a road was initially opened should probably be viewed very critically. There are a number of reasons for this. First, in the eighteenth century a period of this length would probably have exceeded the lifespan of most men, and therefore of living memory, and would have become dependent to a great extent upon traditional knowledge, that as handed down from father to son. Thus, errors might have crept in during the second generation. Second, roads constructed about the threshold of settlement and during the succeeding two decades or so were probably more likely to be moved slightly during this time as deficiencies existing in the original route came to be corrected. Then, as population increased and new counties were created, county seats moved, and boundaries rearranged, routes of travel were often altered and what had been an important road turned into little more than a disused path.

Beyond this, the historical forces external to the various counties but – 20 –