Page:A Guide to the Preparation of County Road Histories.pdf/31

 be avoided at all costs is the useless repetition of those prints already overly used to illustrate books and articles on Virginia's early history.

What form should the road history itself take as it is written? No really comprehensive answer to this question can be made, although it is assumed that the form will be generally that of a rather straightforward chronological narrative as it unfolds itself to the reader.

Variations in the patterns of development of the various counties, differences in the kinds of surviving records, architectural and road remains, and various other factors will doubtless serve to greaten the emphasis on certain parts of the narrative and to lessen it on others. Certain aspects of the history may also call for extended and detailed treatment as they occur in the narrative. As with the Albemarle road history, this will usually be determined by the first occurrence or occurrences of something such as, say, bridge building or river navigation, when it will usually be found most convenient to insert an essay dealing with the subject in some detail for the whole early period, or at least up to some landmark or watershed event in the field. In cases where this insert would be of such magnitude as to render the narrative discontinuous it would perhaps be better to consign the information to an appendix while allowing a brief synopsis to carry on the narrative to its conclusion.

As with the matter of illustrations, the choice of maps for a road history will depend greatly upon the ingenuity of the individual researcher. The term "map" is here used to define those maps detachable from the printed study itself, rather than those maps or portions of them contained within the study and used to illustrate portions of the narrative.

One of the main problems inherent to preparing a road history is that of making the narrative understandable to the novice reader in terms of the present landmarks, roads, route numbers, towns and villages. This becomes even more difficult if adequate maps are not supplied with the narrative. Detachability is specified because it is anticipated that almost all readers will, at one time or another, wish to conduct their own site surveys of various roads or portions of them dealt with in the text.

While theoretically it would be possible for one interested in road history to follow the history of a county's early roads using only a current road map of the county, a much clearer picture is possible if, in addition to a current road map, a map drawn on a similar scale and showing the early road network is at hand. In the interests of illustrating the apparent correspondence of the present road system with that laid down within the first quarter century or so after the threshold of settlement, this may take – 25 –