Page:The McClure Family.djvu/28

16 Rockbridge counties; and then some of them vainly dreaming that there could be upon this continent a more beautiful or fertile country, pushed on to Southwest Virginia, to Tennessee, Kentucky and farther west. Others turning eastward crossed the Blue Ridge and found homes in Southside Virginia, or pressing on, settled the piedmont section of the Carolinas.

That they were pioneers in the American Revolution and the struggle for religious liberty is an oft told tale.

Among the first of these settlers in the upper Valley of Virginia were a number of McClures. In writing of them and of their descendants, I fully agree with Sir Walter Scott, that "Family tradition and genealogical history are the very reverse of amber; which, itself a valuable substance, usually includes flies, straws and other trifles; whereas these studies being in themselves very insignificant and trifling, do, nevertheless, seem to perpetuate a great deal of what is rare and valuable in ancient manners, and to record many curious and minute facts, which could have been preserved and conveyed through no other medium."

And also the saying of Edmund Burke, "People who never look backward to their ancestors will never look forward to posterity."